


112 Years

by famousinthatanonymousway



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: F/M, M/M, it's just i love Barry a lot?, of thing about barry through the 10 years of being a litch but, so i wanted to write out his whole kind, this is a character study so i mean, yknow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-15 22:28:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 50,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13040784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/famousinthatanonymousway/pseuds/famousinthatanonymousway
Summary: ...and some odd days.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> wow! i come back into writing and it's not aa? i'm such a loser!
> 
> okay so like, 100000000000 things, but mostly these:  
> \- i did not mean for this to be this long. i'm sorry. it's multichaptered because i have no chill  
> \- there are a TON of headcanons i found on tumblr and on twitter and stuff in this, and while their designs in my head are my own, i can't take full credit for these headcanons. like the one about barry's name really being sildar hallwinter. if you see something that you posted about in this fic, please let me know if it bothers you. your headcanon was just so damn good i considered it one of mine too.  
> \- in SAYING THAT, when i started writing this i had the idea that i wanted to do a story that had kravitz and barry running into each other a few times because that had to have been a think. there is a work that came out that i CANNOT FIND TO LINK that's about that idea specifically. i think it's called I Saw Seven Bounties? anyway i've not read it, but i want you to know, author, if you read this fic i WILL be reading it, because we seem to have the same opinions on barry and krav duking it out.  
> -this was over 90 pages in word. i'm really, really sorry, and i'm never doing this again  
> -this was not really proof read? if you see anything weird, please let me know in the comments. i have to leave for a trip in 11 hours, and i am so lazy

The spell kills him, not the fall. Which is…fine, so far as he’s concerned, he’s died before and the fall hurts _symbolically_ yes, but for a moment he’s relieved that Taako wasn’t around to know that his blast had done him in. And for a moment, just for a fraction of a second, he thinks that Taako would feel pretty awful if he knew the fall was a result of the spell. It is a pretty horrible display of splattered limbs. (Taako wasn’t incapable of guilt. When this happened, as it was wont to do, usually it ended in the beginning of the next cycle with a brief “sorry Barold, next time don’t step in front of my spell” and a brief but absolutely sincere hug from him right before he was passed over to Lup’s waiting arms.)

But that moment, that tiny, insignificant amount of time, blinks past, and Barry’s litch form is staring in horror at his body, and realizations come to him in broken, panicked fragments, like some kind of twisted blackout poetry.

Dead, he’s dead on the ground not because he’d gotten in the way of a spell, but because Taako, Taako his brother, his friend, was asked to do it he. He was asked to, to. To…

No. Pleaded with. Had to kill him, had to. To.

He had to stop forgetting her face, that’s why. Things were fading like Lucretia’s paints under turpentine, scrubbed away and leaving a blurred image, then a smudge, then a shadow, then static in his brain, slipping away, further and further away from, from, from.

Back soon. Lup left and said she’d be back soon, a note sealed with her kiss that he’d started keeping in the breast pocket of his robe a week after she left, left side, close to his heart. A week after because Taako, who was never great at divination, had tried everything he could to scry for his twin, from using her note, to her hair, to blood. The latter attempt, even with Barry’s skill in necromancy, was not enough to hone in on her whereabouts. Taako had told him to keep the letter, because, you know, fuck it, we’ll find her, I don’t need a reminder she’s gone, Barold, I don’t, I really don’t. (Tears didn’t work either in scrying, it turned out, but he wasn’t going to be the one to mention Taako’s. Not right then.) Then. Then…

Lup. Taako has stared to forget Lup, and Barry had started to forget why he was looking for Lup, then who he was looking for, and then he’d started to forget Taako’s last name, (Taako Lup and Lup Taako, twins who never had a surname, and took the name of the most important person in their lives to survive), and then started to forget her face. Her smile. Her laugh. Her. 

This all snaps into his newly-undead mind in a single breath and he gasps and shakes, and flickers and almost— _almost—_ loses his composure. He can remember now yes, remember everything that kept him tethered to his mind, but…but _why in the world_ would this have happened? The only explanation he had immediately at his fingertips was a _how_ , and obviously that was Fisher’s doing. Nothing else in all of existence had the power to make you forget like a Voidfish.

Like _the_ Voidfish.

There’s…there is too much to think about, too much to fear, and he’s a litch without a body out in the open, and right now, he needs to find a place to hide, regroup, and do something about his…litchyness.

He shuts his eyes. Thinks of his family. Thinks of his Lup.

He gathers what he can off of his body—a few vials of his blood, taken himself; his glasses, broken in half, lenses shattered, and Lup’s note—and makes his way to…somewhere else.

* * *

 

_Sildar Hallwinter, said the letter, it is with great pleasure that we inform you of your acceptance into the Institute of Planar Research and Exploration as the lead science officer and necromantic expert aboard the Starblaster. Blah blah blah, important mission, blah blah blah, bond machine, he’s read it over a thousand times. He’s read it over a million times. He can recite it like a favorite movie, or passage from a book. Barry has held the paper and traced the raised lettering over and over on the acceptance letter until the word “accepted” is nearly a ghost._

_He’d been selected along with six others to do what no one has ever, ever done. To explore the Planar System, worlds beyond their world, beyond their universe, and he was selected as lead scientific officer._

_Fuck. Yes._

_He’d been taking it all very seriously, only fist pumping and doing an excited dance when he thought no one could see. Training for the mission every day, going over emergency procedures, gathering his own research on planes and dimensions and a few freelance papers he’d published over the years on some necromancy equations and the relation between theoretical planar travel and spiritual summoning. It was all serious (and incredibly exciting) stuff._

_He’d already met the captain, a serious-mannered gnome called Davenport, and the chronicler, Lucretia, who was an extremely young, quiet woman with tight curls, dark skin, and an incredibly good eye for detail, if the sketch she’d flashed him earlier was anything to go by._

_So far, it seemed like some kind of dream. Some bizarre, wonderful dream. He was still waiting to wake up, even now, sitting under the planet’s two suns, tracing the letters on this paper like they were going to float away if he didn’t press them down again and again._

_“Sildar Hallwinter,” a voice says from above him. High-pitched and drawn out, “Sildar” coming out more like “Sil-daaaar.”_

_“Actually, it’s just Barry, can I—” he looks up to greet the person in question, and is face to face with…a young elf (well, a lot of elves **look**_ _young). The most beautiful elf he’s ever seen, in fact. Their hair is long, blond, and braided over one shoulder, and their eyes are that unnaturally bright yellow-green that most elves have, what with their dark-vision, and so beautiful he forgets why he’s called Barry and not Sildar for a good thirty seconds. They’re leaning over him just a bit, hands on their hips, covered with thick, fingerless biker’s gloves that read “face” and “here” on the left and right knuckles, respectively._

_Barry clears his throat, face warm, and leans back and away. “Uh. Sorry, uh. Did you need me for something?”_

_Another force yanks the paper out of his slackened hands before he can be surprised, and another elf—almost an exact copy of the one in front of him, except they're sporting a large, deep blue wizards hat, with a star charm hanging off that twinkles in the light—finishes casting Blink and reads out loud, “‘Lead science officer and necromantic expert.’“_

_He panics just a bit, and all but yelps, “Please give that back!” before he can stop himself from sounding like a child and not the mid-thirties man he is._

_“Starblaster mission,” continues the elf with the hat, “blah blah blah…huh. He’s not as interesting as the half-pint or the jolly green giant.”_

_The gloved elf scoffs and turns to look at their—twin? Has to be. Unless it’s a disguise spell, which he doubts. He’s not about to churn out a detection spell if he doesn’t have to. “Well, they can’t all be massive humans and crunchy dwarves now can they? Sometimes you’ve gotta be normal and boring and a nerd.”_

_Barry bristles at this. “Uh. I’m sorry?”_

_“You should be,” says Hat. “ I’ll forgive you, though. Gracious as I am wont to be.”_

_“Be nice,” Gloves says, taking the paper back, their grip gentle on it. “Sildar-Barry is a respected member of the Starblaster crew, and you making crappy first impressions will get us nowhere.”_

_In lieu of a response, Hat sticks their tongue out._

_Barry clears his throat. “Can…I help you two?” he asks, and he blushes when he sounds nervous instead of authoritative or curious. For fuck’s sake…_

_“Not really,” says Gloves as Hat opens their mouth. “We’re just looking for the rest of the crew. Might as well do a quick meet-and-greet so that Day Numero Uno isn’t full of those awkward team-building greeting exercises.”_

_Barry nods slowly, saying “oh,” and the words take awhile to sink in. When they do, he stands very quickly, eyes wide. “Oh! You—you’re part of the Starblaster crew.”_

_“Very good, Mr. Scientist,” says Hat, and they’re clapping their much more elegantly gloved hands slowly, eyes wide and dishonest in the complement._

_Gloves snickers. “It’s nice to meet you. This is my annoying baby brother, Taako,” they say, jerking a thumb toward Hat._

_Hat nods and jerks a thumb back at Gloves. “And this is my terrible baby sister, Lup.”_

_Well, that’s an affirmative on the twin theory._

_He hesitantly holds out a hand to shake. “Sildar Hallwinter, but, uh. Everyone just calls me Barry.”_

_Gloves—Lup, now, reaches for his hand, and he’s struck this time not by her beauty, but the power and thought behind her stare. An IPRE member, a member of the Starblaster crew; he’s dealing with a partner, a colleague, and someone who is probably a couple of centuries older than he is. He doesn’t want to assume too much about her—about them both—but he’s already that much more intimidated and well…in awe. Swell._

_“Why do they do that?” Lup asks._

_He blinks. “Sorry?”_

_“Call you Barry. Sildar doesn’t sound anything like Barry.”_

_He shrugs. She lets his hand go very quickly, but waves hers toward him in a silent order to elaborate. “It’s just. You know, it’s a stuffy name. So my parents, friends, they called me Darry when I was growing up, and it devolved into Barry. And it just. Stuck, I guess? Kind of like getting Dicky from the name Richard, or Bobby from Robert.”_

_Taako snorts, the unused, aged joke hanging in the air between the three of them, and Barry flushes deeper._

_Lup fights a smile at her brother’s antics and nods, one immaculate eyebrow raised in curiosity. “You don’t look like a Barry.”_

_Again he shrugs. “I can’t do much about that. Sorry to disappoint you.”_

_Taako pipes up then, tilting his head. “You also don’t look like a Hallwinter. Not that you don’t look like you fit the last name, because you do, but something else would fit better, dig?”_

_“Oh for sure, yeah,” Lup agrees. “Huh. Tell us, Barold, do you feel like a Hallwinter today? What’s your favorite color? What’s the vibe you’re going for?”_

_“Aloof scientist?” asks Taako._

_“Crazed astrophysicist?”_

_“Straight up disaster?”_

_“Closet disaster nerd-boy extraordinaire?”_

_Barry snorts and crosses his arms. This is…confusing, and weird and he’s not quite sure where they’re going with this. “That one,” he says, nodding to Lup. Might as well play along._

_Taako laughs, and so does Lup, and oh boy does that do something to the butterflies in his stomach._

_Lup gives him a quick once over, and her eyes hone in on his legs. “Are…those blue jeans a part of the uniform or are you just that much of a dork?”_

_Barry looks down at his legs. Blushes. Doesn’t look back up, but stutters something that he doesn’t really hear to defend himself. It’s weak, and he knows it’s weak because Lup claps her hands together, wrinkling his letter that she still held, and shouts, “That’s it!”_

_“W….hat?”_

_Lup hands over the piece of paper, cackling. “Bluejeans! Local nerd-boy, necro-dork, and science whizz kid.”_

_Barry sputters. “I—wait—that’s—I’m in my thirties--!”_

_The brother cackles, and Barry frowns even deeper. “It fits!”_

_Lup smiles and puts a hand on his shoulder. “Well, it was nice to meet you, Barry Bluejeans,” she says, and it would have felt like someone naming a pet if she hadn’t said it with such sincerity that it made his heart flip and his eyes look up. Her brother is a few paces away, and she looks about ready to follow him. “Taako and I are the arcane experts on the ship. We’re chefs too, natch, but we’re probably gonna have to work together at some point.”_

_Oh. Great._

_“So buck up, nerdlord.” And with that, she gives him a double finger gun, and saunters away, after Taako._

_(Bluejeans, that dumb, wonderful nickname, sticks.)_

* * *

 

It’s not a body but it’s a start. That’s what he keeps telling himself. A start. A bit of congealed blood in a vial, but a start.

He’s not…sure really, how to start. He doesn’t know where to look for Lup. Because, of course, that’s who he has to get to first. It’s been at least four months, and Barry has had to start over from memory with a new map. He remembers, of course, the places he and Taako had researched, but he hasn’t been able to quite crack down on the exact geography around the last obsidian circle. He’s visited a few times, and searched for traces of Lup’s magic, but nothing has jumped out at him. No place he can make it to, anyway, at least not right now.

Lucretia has been looking for him. He can feel it every time he’s in the out in the world for too long. Feels that tentative touch of scrying magic, the cold brush of fingers through his soul, searching. So he sets up barriers and wards and traps, and anything else he can thing of to keep her _out._

He’s seen what she’s done.

To Merle, sticking him on the beach in some plastic home with a wife who’s distaste is mutual.

To Magnus, who is happy, stupid in love, and yet throws himself recklessly into danger, not always knowing as to why most days.

To Taako, alone now as he had never been in his life, doing odd jobs cooking for caravans and the like.

He didn’t know where Davenport had been stowed, and he didn’t know his condition, but it frightened him, _she_ frightened him.

He wasn’t sure of her reasoning, not yet, but Lucretia had made this decision for her family on her own. One hundred years of battle, travel, tears, laughs, learning, the Light? Gone with her journals into the Voidfish’s tank.

He spends hours sometimes, when it aches too much to think about Lup, or to mourn his crew, standing outside his cave and thinking back to the final days aboard the Startblaster. Were there signs? Had he missed something? How could this—this horrible new life she’d given the five of them, (not Lup, _not_ Lup, he refuses to believe it) stripped of everything but the bare minimum of their minds, separated as they had not been for a hundred and two-ish years, be better? Why would she have chosen this fate for them?

He couldn’t understand it.

He’s out one night, watching the new stars of this new sky, and missing the double Suns of his home when a different feeling envelops him.

At first, he think’s _She’s found me again_ and stands quickly, making to hide in his cave like the forced hermit he’s become. But behind him is something very knew.

A man, tall in stature, in a raven-black, feathered cloak, sharply dressed and extremely handsome, stands behind him wielding a threatening scythe.

If he hadn’t had one hundred plus years of theatrics and glamor and actual fear, he’d be extremely intimidated.

“Can I help you, buddy?” he asks, and he hasn’t spoken out loud in a very long time, but he sounds…exhausted. Even for a litch.

The man’s crimson, glowing eyes narrow. “Sildar Hallwinter?” he asks. “You—“

“It’s Barry, actually,” he corrects. “What’s left of him anyway. For now. Keep go—Actually sorry,” he amends when the man opens his mouth again. “It’s not really Hallwinter anymore, either. I mean it _is_ but it isn’t. Bluejeans is what I’ve been going by lately.”

The stranger pauses at that, and summons a book. He flicks through the pages, eyes stopping on some part of the book that he can’t see. “Barry Bluejeans?” he asks, in some strange, probably fake, accent. “That’s. Not what this says.”

Barry shrugs. “Sildar is fine. It’s usually a pen name now, but it’s fine.”

“Fine. Sildar Hallwinter—”

Barry sighs loudly, interrupting the man again. He looks _very_ put out, and for a moment he…flickers. Weird. “Sorry,” he apologizes. “I know it doesn’t look it, but I am a little busy? Doin’ uh…you know what? Family stuff. And you’re in the way of my little hidey-hole, so if we could do this inside? Maybe after tea or coffee or something?”

The stranger’s jaw clenches tight. “ _Sildar Hallwinter_ ,” he says, much more loudly, and behind it, he can almost hear the cry of a raven. “You have accumulated a bounty in the Astral Plane for several crimes that violate the law of the The Raven Queen.”

Barry whistles, impressed both at this man’s dedication and the fact that he can still actually whistle while litchified. He’s never actually tried it before. “Jeez, you’re a real devout follower.”

The glare gets sharper. “By order of the Raven Queen, you are accused of the crime of necromancy—“

“In theory, mostly,” Barry interjects. He’s enjoying this, maybe just a bit too much. “Very little practice, couldn’t get a cadaver—”

“—litchification and evading the Astral Plane nine times, if you count your most recent death. Which we do.”

At this, Barry does pause in his ribbing. Sure, he’s dead now, anyone that can see his lich form knows his mortal shell is gone. But the eight other times?

No one but the people on the Starblaster should know that, and this punk-goth wasn’t one of the crew members.

“Oh, fuck,” Barry breathes, because shit. This isn’t just some fanatic to a goddess Barry doesn’t totally care about right now. This is a Reaper. A real, live (kinda) Reaper. If it were any other time of his life, he’d be scrambling for a pencil and paper; proof that a being shepherded souls into a different plane would do wonders on proving a few of his old theory papers.

“Yeah,” the Reaper said, and his smile was dark and fanged. “Oh fuck is right, Mr. Hallwinter. For your crimes against the Raven Queen, you have been sentenced to spend your afterlife in the Eternal Stockade with possible rehabilitation.”

Barry tilts his head. “Do I have to go right now?” he asks. It’s all well and good to do your job but Barry has one he has to get back to, and Death himself, clad in all his over-the-top fashion glory, cannot tear him away from it.

The man’s form once again flickers oddly, and his eyebrows rise in surprise before falling and pinching together. “Y-yes, right now would be preferable.”

Barry crosses his arms and shakes his head. “I’m busy right now, man. Can you try me in five years? Ten maybe? I should have this solved by ten.”

More flickering. “You are to follow me to the Stockade,” was all that was said in a tight and formal tone. He was looking a bit gaunt now, and Barry leans in a little, interested.

“How are you doing that face thing?” he asks, then pulled back, his hands up in a submissive gesture. “I mean you’re obviously not human,” he continues, leaning this way and that to view him from different angles. “Degenerative Disguises are a _thing,_ according to a friend of mine, but no one actually uses them. But this is new, because you’re flickering, which is _not_ what spells are supposed to do.”

“Are you coming with me or _not_ , Mr. Hallwinter?” the Reaper snaps, tracking his every movement.

Barry stand straight again, and if he had had skin, he would have been blushing. Busy or not, it was kind of rude to antagonize the messenger. And study him like he was some kind of specimen. “Right. No, I don’t think so.” He makes to move past the reaper. “Like I said, I’m busy with something.”

And he is stopped with the business end of the scythe pointed at his spectral chest. “You will come now, or you will be dragged there by force.” And his skin is gone, just _poof!_ out of existence, leaving a much more intimidating skull in its place.

It takes him a moment to move past the brand-spanking-new spooky look to process those words. Dragged there? Well, shit. That isn’t going to fly. Not now. He’s come across word of a magical auction nearby, and if he’s ever going to find Lup’s relic, his hope seems to be there. It’s a long shot, and he’s no closer to tracking anything more substantial, no closer to finding Lup, yet. But he’s not about to stop trying or take a break because some fancy ass ghost herder told him he had to do time in a prison that wasn’t even under the command of his own world’s Raven Queen.

So he shoves the scythe away from him, and tries not to hiss as the blessing upon it burns his hand. It’s not magic, which mean this Reaper doesn’t have a focus for his power, but it is a tool bestowed by a goddess, and he’s technically unholy (which made being around Merle in a fight nauseating, no matter how much he loves and appreciates Pan’s blessings and watchful eye). But shove it away he does and floats back a bit, ready to fight.

“Listen,” he says slowly, extending a hand toward the Reaper. “I’m sure you’re just doing your job, so I’m sorry about this. But I’m looking for someone right now, and I’m not about to put that on hold because the Raven Queen put a hit out on me. You’ve gotta move out of my way.”

The Reaper looks amused.  

“I mean it,” says Barry, and he feels the exhilarating red energy numb his fingertips. “No one probably goes quietly to ghost jail—“

“The Eternal Stockade.”

“—gesundheit. Anyway, a lot of people probably leave the plane kicking and screaming. I’m not going to do that. But I _am_ going to have to blast you back into the Astral Plane if you don’t back off.”

The Reaper studies him for a minute, still brandishing his scythe. “You’re surprisingly charismatic for a litch. It’s not working, mind, but it shows.”

Barry snorts. Cool, another thing he didn’t know he could do as a litch. Conversation is great for learning new little things like that. “Thanks. I’m usually the nerd of the bunch.”

“It’s a shame it’s not going to get you anything but a longer sentence and little chance of parole.”

Barry shrugs. “Guess I’ll deal with that next time.” And he thinks of Lup’s smile, and her laugh, and her hands, warm from spell casting, in his. His memories crackle to life in the form of red electricity, and he sends a bolt of energy the diameter of a tree trunk flying at the Reaper.

It’s a fucking lucky shot. He hadn’t expected it to hit, but neither had the Reaper, and so it does, and it sends him flying toward the mouth of Barry’s cave. There is a loud, long groan from the prone form as Barry floats passed him to head into the cave.

“Sorry,” he apologizes. And he does mean it. He doesn’t have time to make enemies, and he’s not about to go looking for any more fights than he has to.

The Reaper is twitching, red sparks still kind of jumping over his boney face and arms, and Barry winces in return to the glare that is sent his way. “Better luck next time, buddy.”

“Fuck you,” groans the Reaper. His outfit is singed.

Barry laughs, and reminds himself to look for a newer place to hide out. “Yeah, you too.”

And then heads back to his notes.

* * *

 

_It’s not their first rodeo. It’s their fourth, but they’re getting the hang of things. It shouldn’t be as hard as it is, especially when they might be the only seven in people in the world who actually get a reset button. But he can’t fucking take this anymore._

_It’s Davenport, and then Magnus who die in this cycle._

_The captain had a run in with some weird spores that did all sorts of painful, horrible things to his respiratory system before effectively drowning him. He hadn’t died before, but he hadn’t been afraid to go, and just told Lucretia to tell Barry to fly the ship when the time came. He’d been learning, or, well, trying to learn to fly the Starblaster, but he hadn’t thought he’d need the knowledge so soon. Cap’nport just seemed so…untouchable, like the rest of the ship. To see him pale, struggling to breathe past the water in his lungs…it felt too final._

_Magnus goes at the hands of a creature with four eyes and a maw the size of man himself. They kill it, of course, but Magnus had three of the fucker’s claws in his side and had died before the battle was won._

_They’d both been buried, because how else were they to cope with the deaths, and now everyone was moving on for the year._

_And right now, Lurcetia, young, quiet Lucretia, was getting sick. They’d all done what they could, Merle being the resident medic doing the most, but it looked almost like what had taken Davenport. Too early to tell, said Merle, but he’d be keeping an eye on it._

_It was quieter without Magnus._

_It was less steady without Davenport._

_It’s terrifyingly empty without Lucretia’s constant hovering and scribbling._

_He can’t fucking take this anymore._

_There wasn’t protocol for this. No one had prepared them for the Hunger, or the plane jumping, or the Light of Creation searches, or the rewinds. They had learned to prepare for casualties, but the officers of the IPRE had also told them that it was to be mostly reconnaissance and experimentation and diplomacy. No one was supposed to die. This wasn’t the mission. They weren’t supposed to chase some light across worlds just to save no one._

_He doesn’t realize he’s crying until his glasses are fogged with tears._

_“Barry?”_

_The one voice he doesn’t want to hear. The one voice he’s thankful is still here._

_Lup walks slowly into his room. She doesn’t flick on the lights, which he’s grateful for. She doesn’t need to of course; she has dark vision, which he’s cursing at the moment. He jams the heels of his hands into his eyes to erase the evidence that he’d been crying. That he’d been anything but strong like the rest of them in the face of this hellhole lifestyle that had been foisted upon the crew._

_“Lup,” he croaks, and winces. Fuck. “What’d you. Uh. What’d you need?”_

_He removes his hands from his face and takes a deep, shaky breath and feels her sit on the corner of his bed._

_“Nothing really I…dinner is ready. I figured you’d want a piece of that action.”_

_He’s not hungry. He actually thinks he wants to be sick. “I’ll be there in a minute. Sorry.”_

_“S’okay.”_

_He doesn’t look at her. She doesn’t say anything else for several minutes. The silence is thick and awkward, but neither of them move. Until Lup does._

_She scoots a little further onto the bed and sighs. “Taako had to wake me up from a dream last night.”_

_Barry doesn’t move, but he must give some sign that he’s listening intently because she continues. “It wasn’t anything too bad. I just thought we’d had less time than we did to get away from the Hunger.”_

_“We have seven more months.”  
_

_He hears her hair shift against her shoulders as she nods. “Yeah. I know. I just thought…I don’t know.”_

_Another beat of silence._

_“Do you and Taako share a room?”_

_Another shifting of her hair; shaking her head no, then nodding it yes. “Sort of. We have separate rooms. We’re just used to the company. It’s…hard to sleep alone after a century or so of sleeping next to someone you trust.”_

_He nods. “That makes sense.”_

_“Were you…” she starts, and her voice is loud suddenly, like it sometimes is when she gets worked up, or worried. She lowers it and tries again. “Were you uh. Crying in here, all by your lonesome?”_

_He laughs. It’s a wet, worn sound. “Me? Nah.”_

_“Because you know. That’s…cool to do. Right?”_

_He nods. “No, I know. I just wasn’t doing it. I mean. Not right then. I mean. No. That’s a lie—“_

_“I know.”_

_“—I was kind of crying, but I…” he shrugs. “Why?”_

_Lup shrugs in his peripheral. “Just wanted to know if you were okay.”_

_Barry sniffs. Nods, and then shakes his head like she had. “We…weren’t supposed to do this. This wasn’t supposed to happen. This wasn’t supposed to be more than two years, right?”_

_“Right.” She says it like a question, and it’s gentle. Probing. He appreciates it, appreciates her presence right now._

_“And we just. We’re going to keep losing people, which in the long run is fine, sure, I guess. But it sucks. We’re…we are the only people in the world with a fucking reset button, but. We’re still losing people. I mean, Davenport just. Drowned I guess, or that’s what Merle said it was, and Magnus I…we were there. Magnus just rushed in and let himself get killed. Lup you were there too, you **saw** …the…it…they were sticking out of his side like they **belonged** there, like they grew out of him, Lup. And this is only for a year, but twenty down the road? How many times are we going to lose each other? A-and now Lucretia, she’s dying, probably, and I can’t watch that again, I can’t, I don’t think I can do it. I. I don’t think I can do **this** anymore, and I know it’s…it’s only been four years but I…fuck. Fuck! I don’t know.”_

_She is quiet, and he breaks into sobs again. He doesn’t care anymore. He’s terrified. He can conceivably carry on in this life forever, into infinity, living and dying and coming back, chasing a light to another doomed world, outrunning a darkness they don’t understand until it’s too big to run from. He **can**_ _live like that, because right now he and the other six of the IPRE are pretty much immortal. He just doesn’t want to. Not if it means referring the rest of his infinite future as “cycles” like some kind of soulless automaton._

_Lup scoots closer to him, and he feels an arm wind around his shaking shoulders, bringing him closer. He leans into it, forgetting for a moment that he’s supposed to be professional here. That’s he technically around a coworker._

_She very tentatively squeezes his shoulder, and rubs slow, soothing circles with her thumb. “You’re right,” she says, and it’s so soft and honest that for a minute he cries a little harder, presses a little closer. “This does suck.”_

_He snorts, and it's fairly unattractive, but he doesn’t care._

_She continues, and he can tell she’s looking straight ahead by the way her voice is cast away from them, like she’s throwing her next words at the wall. “I think we’re all going through it. It sucks. It really…really sucks. It’s like the stages of grief, but instead of one person one time, it’s. Well, everything, a bunch of times, isn’t it?”_

_He nods._

_“This really sucks, Barry. Elves live a pretty long time, but I think I can honestly say that I never considered ‘forever’ a lifespan for me. I mean, don’t get me wrong, the prospect of immortality has always had its perks, but this? This is objectively the worst way to achieve it._

_“I…I think a little tears shed over the whole thing is the very least of what we can do.” She snorts, humorlessly. “Wait until the anger stage sets in. I’m going to light the couch in the lounge up like a fucking Candlenight’s bush.” She pauses to take a deep breath, and he didn’t notice she was trembling until she's stopped. “We’re all stuck in this weirdo situation,” she tells him. “We’ve lost a lot already. I’m not going to lie to you either, Barold, we’re probably gonna lose more. But…uh. I think that as long as there are other people to share in it, it’s not going to be scary and miserable forever.”_

_“You think?”  
_

_She nods. “Mmhm. I think we’ll be fine. In the end, I think we’ll be fine.”_

_“Yeah,” he croaks. “I…thank you.”_

_“You’re…you’re welcome.”_

_And then he laughs, harsh and self-depreciating, and sniffles. “Look at me. It’s only year four, and I’m already a mess.”_

_Lup shrugs. “Don’t sweat it. I cried last night over it. Because it’s only year four but…it’s been four years. You know? It’s…really nothing to be ashamed of.”_

_He finally looks at her. Even in the darkness of his room, he can see the glow of her eyes, sad and distant, and see the bags under them starting to form._

_“You look exhausted,” he whispers._

_She nods, a sharp single nod, and keeps looking straight. “It’s hard to sleep when it’s quiet like this.”_

_“You don’t sleep,” Barry says, not thinking._

_Lup only smiles softly at this. “Nah, I sleep. I meditate when I can’t, but sleep is kind of like a heavy meditation.”_

_Barry sits up a bit straighter. “You haven’t been able to do either.” It’s not a question._

_“Not much of it, anyway,” says Lup. “And last night I was…well I guess I was thinking about the crew. And Taako and I. And how it’s been four years since the Hunger, and how I keep telling myself that it’s only year four, that I could try crying ten, or twenty years into it. But then telling myself that means this might last more than twenty years. Might last more that two hundred.”_

_Barry sighs deeply, and Lup does the same._

_“It sucks we don’t have an ending to get to,” Lup grumbles suddenly, and she leans her head on top of Barry’s. (She’s always been taller than he is.)_

_Barry hums glumly in agreement. “Like those shitty soap opera’s back home. No foreseeable ending, just trouble after trouble after trouble.”_

_Lup stares down at him, and he feels her pull away, instead placing both hands on his shoulders, turning him to face her, and looking him in the eye. “Barold Bluejeans,” she whispers, and he ignores the way it make his heart skip a beat. “Barold J. Bluejeans, are you telling me, now, on this day, to my face, that you were a viewer and avid consumer of those horrible things?”_

_“Barold ‘J’? Where’d the ‘J’ come from?”_

_“Answer the question, you monster.”_

_“If I say yes, what are the chances you’ll hear me out?”_

_“None. That actually proves you’re guilty. You heathen.”_

_Her face betrays nothing underneath but honest-to-gods horror, and what ever she was trying to do works, because Barry laughs. And Lup laughs with him._

_And for a moment, just a minute or two, they’re laughing until they’re both crying, but no one says anything about it this time. Lup calms herself first and re-invites him down to dinner. He follows her to the dinning area, and has the sudden thought as he sits between her and Merle that even in the darkest of times, he’d be willing to follow her anywhere._

* * *

 

 _“Fuck!”_ It’s a whip-crack that bounces off the rocky wall in front of him, a scream of pure anger and anguish. He’d been so _fucking_ close, so fucking _close!_ Fuck!

Fuck, fuck, fuck! He’s not sure if he screams those last few out loud again, floating above his newly mangled corpse, or if he keeps it in his head.

Which he’s not losing, not quite yet. The burst of energy that comes with releasing a litch from your body is easy to contain if you have the means of doing so. And he does.

He thinks of Lup. Her intelligent eyes, her laugh, the warmth of her hand in his, her radiant energy, his light.

He thinks of his family.

It’s been…what, a little over a year now since he’d fallen from the Starblaster, and the most he’d come away with was a hideout near Phandalin and his pod. He considers it as he moves to collect the blood that’s dripping from his body’s mouth into a small vial, and gather the rest of the belongings. He’s found very little on the Phoenix Fire Gauntlet’s whereabouts, and therefore has very little on his only lead to Lup. It’s not hard to find when it’s used; listen to the local shop keep talk about a mysterious circle of obsidian, head there, find nothing. But there hasn’t been anything new since a little before last year, since he’d first started searching for her. He can’t remember every place that the gauntlet had touched, and it’s setting him further back than he’d been when he’d been on the ship. So far, he’s been following leads and rumors and fun little local conspiracy theories, mapping them all out.

He’d been trying to get a vantage point on this one when…this shit happened. He curses again, something welling up in his spectral chest, unpleasant, and it almost chokes him. It feels like the wave of energy that sweeps out of him when he wakes up as a litch, but deeper, heavier. It moves like mud, like wet sand, not the quick pulse of arcane electricity.

It’s as he makes his way down the cliff side that he identifies the feeling as loneliness, and it hits him hard. Gods, but he misses them. Misses them all. So, _so_ much. They were a constant in his life, people he never thought he’d have to lose. Not like this, not with such finality, not so soon. He was prepared to die on this planet with all of them, wrecked as they were; he was prepared for this to be _it._

He would reach out to them: he knows where most of them are now, and though he hasn’t checked on them since he’d first stumbled upon them, he does hear things. Sometimes. He hasn’t heard much about a dwarven cleric running around asking about Pan, but he hasn’t been keeping an ear to the ground for Merle. As far as he knows, he’s on the beach still, in that weird marriage of his.

He _has_ started to hear about a small, traveling cooking caravan that’s made it’s rounds near Neverwinter, and he’s almost sure that’s Taako.

And he’s been hearing more and more about Ravens Roost. Not so much about Mags, but the place itself, and for now knows he is safe.

He doesn’t know where Lu is, but he knows she’s set herself up somewhere because she can find _him_.

He hasn’t heard anything about a serious middle-aged gnomish man who’s good with navigating and illusions.

He wants to check on them all, wants to find them and beg them to remember. But he can’t.

What he needs—no, _who_ he needs, is Lup.

And he hasn’t found Lup. Not yet.

He doesn’t get any further on that thought when he hears the sound of tearing fabric from behind him, and a wordless shout follow it.

He throws himself to the ground, and he would have lost his breath if he’d had any. Barry quickly rolls himself onto his back and scurries backward before the Reaper’s scythe can tear through him.

Fuck, this wasn’t what happened last time. Maybe that blast he’d sent at the poor guy—who is walking toward him now, looking like the embodiment of wrath—had revoked his right to a cordial meeting in the future.

The Reaper is upon him in another moment, just as Barry reaches out a hand, ready to blast him. Being this close to the holy object—and by that he means having his chin basically resting on top of it—makes him sick, makes him dizzy, but he stays strong. It’s terrifying.

“By order of the Raven Queen, for the crimes of necromancy, litchification, and _deliberant_ avoidance of crossing over to the Astral Plane, Sildar Hallwinter, you are sentenced to an afterlife in the Eternal Stockade.” He is breathing very hard, and, the poor guy, he looks so angry.

Barry lifts his chin defiantly anyway. “You have ten seconds to get that scythe away from my throat before I blast you back through the really cool interplanar hole you’ve opened back there.”

The Reaper scoffs. “My weapon is imbued with the power of my Queen, a holy power. You have no influence over me, litch, and you certainly don’t have enough power to send me that far.”

“Listen,” Barry snaps. “It’s been a pretty shitty ten or so minutes. I just died again, and I’m not in the greatest of moods.”

“I find myself caring very little about that,” the Reaper sneers. “I will ask one final time; are you coming quietly, or will I have to drag you there, Sildar Hallwinter?”

“My _name_ ,” he growls, “is Barry Bluejeans.” And then he blasts the Reaper, and the guy was right, it doesn’t do as much damage, but it does allow Barry to stand up.

The Reaper staggers, and takes a deep breath before pushing some loose hair away from his face. “I tried to ask nicely.”

Barry scoffs, charging up another spell. “Eat me, asshole,” he snaps. “I already said I’m not going.”

The Reaper’s eyes flash. Literally. “Come hell or high water, litch—“

“ _Barry.”_

“—you _are_ coming with me, if I have to rip the corrupted soul from that ridiculous cloak with my bare hands.”

Barry laughs. “I dare you to try,” he says, and he’s not sure where this confidence is coming from, but he feels his loneliness, and his love, channel into his rage, and controls that into fueling his spell’s power. He’s not going to litch out fully, but he _is_ pretty pissed off.

The Reaper moves forward, and Barry lets loose a spell he learned from Taako; Magic Missile. He’s never been good at it, and as a litch, it comes out differently, shaped with his arcane aura and his past rather than just arcane energy, and a bit more umph behind it. He’s a little better at evocation spells, but those use up more energy than this fight is going to require.

The missiles slam into the Reaper, who is sent skidding backward into the dirt, ass over elbow. They hit his stomach, his back, and the side of his face, and Barry is too proud of himself to feel bad about it.

“Let me guess,” he half shouts. The distance between them is far enough now that normal talking isn’t going to cut it. “You attacked me so suddenly because after I moved spots, you couldn’t track me.”

The Reaper struggles to get into a sitting position. “What?”

Barry shrugs. “Call it a theory of mine. I’ve got plenty of ‘em. Anyway, you can’t track me because I haven’t lost myself to being a litch. When I died back there—”

“And broke the law yet again—“

“I was talking,” Barry grinds out as patiently as he can. This actually shuts the Reaper up and he looks—embarrassed? Wow. “But yes. When I died—and broke the law or whatever—my litch form was released, and I let loose a pretty wide arch of pure, undead, arcane energy. Am I right so far?”

The Reaper nods, mute and glares, though he seems more curious than upset.

“Cool. Okay. So you tracked me here because it was the only way you could find me. If I were to get away right now,” he jerks a thumb over his shoulder as if to demonstrate his inevitable fleeing, “you wouldn’t be able to do it again, not until I die and come back into my litch form.”

The Reaper nods again, and then shakes his head. “I. I mean. There are other means of tracking, obviously. Not every necromancer we find is a litch or something. It is just…easier to find a litch’s energy, because it acts sort of like a…a pulsing beacon that they can’t control. Which is quite fascinating, of course, but powerful and malicious. So we can just follow it and—“ he cuts himself off abruptly, and then the glare is back and he’s looking both angry and a bit ashamed. “Screw you.”

Barry raises his hands innocently. “Sure, screw me, whatever,” he says. “I get it.” If he finds some down time he’s totally going to rewrite that planar traveling and spiritual summoning theory paper.

If Lup could see this now, she’d—

It’s that thought that grounds him, takes his interest away from the science of the situation.

This Reaper will keep finding him, keep trying to find him. He needs to keep trying to find Lup. Those two agendas don’t mix.

Barry sighs. “Look, Reaper. We both know this is a fight you lose today. Better luck next time.”

The Reaper rolls his eyes and twirls his scythe. “What makes you think this is over?”

Barry shrugs. “Don’t know if you’ve noticed, friend, but I’m not you’re run-of-the-mill litch. I have something I…that I have to do.”

Slowly, the Reaper nods. “Unfinished business. That’s not my problem, but I understand.”

Barry shook his head. “You don’t, because that’s not what this is. If I had some kind of shit to do, I’d have done it instead of fling my sorry ass off of a cliff.”

The Reaper snorts, this time seeming entertained. “Just covering bases then, I suppose. Continue.”

He nods in thanks. “As I was saying, I’m fully capable of shoving you back through that nifty portal you made to make sure I have the time that I need to make things right again.”

“Make things right?”

“None of your business,” Barry says quickly. “I don’t mean to be rude, but you really caught me on a shitty day. So I’m gonna have to blast you anyway, but know that I’m gonna feel bad about it later.”

And then he fires a blast of energy at the Reaper, and man, maybe he’s lucky. Or maybe this Reaper isn’t such a great Reaper after all. Either way the blast hits the reaper, who flies back, a little bit past the rift, and into the side of the cliff. Ouch.

“Sorry buddy,” Barry calls. “Like I said, better luck next time. I’m sure you’ll get the hang of it.”

He turns and heads toward Phadalin again, and thinks that while it was massively rude to dispatch the guy like he had, it was also wicked cool.

The voice that says that sounds like Lup, and he aches for her.

* * *

 

_Lup teaches him to cook around the twenty-first year mark. It’s something about the beach, she tells him, that makes food taste so much better. She’s grinning when she says this, and she’s positively glowing in the warm afternoon sunlight, and his brain goes fuzzy and his heart goes warm and boy oh boy does he want to see her smile like that every day._

_Lup is out of the kitchen at the moment, having tasked Barry with knife duty. “Pile on the left is minced, pile on the right is shredded. Don’t touch anything else until I come back, ‘kay babe?” Those were her directions before rushing out of the room, leaving Barry with a burning face and a really sharp blade._

_Taako is in the kitchen too, still damp from the morning surf, hair in a floppy bun, wearing a too-big shirt and shorts that are lost underneath it, flipping through a cookbook he’d purchased on the last world and making corrections to it._

_But he’s quiet while he does this, so Barry isn’t too worried about being hounded by the other chef on his technique of moving super slow while chopping so that he doesn’t lose a finger._

_His brain goes to Lup’s fingers, long and slender and covered in tiny, fine scars from the kitchen, and bumpier, rougher ones from a spell or two gone wrong. Nails that are never the same color two days in a row, and somehow always well kept and clean. The way they were graceful in whatever she did—cooking, writing, experimenting, or simply gesturing wildly, everything was done with both practiced elegance and heartfelt emotion._

_He thinks about the way they wrapped around his wrist to teach him how to use a knife. Soft and warm, and so, so gentle, like the tiny little smile she wore when she was being purely honest._

_He always felt…lucky when she smiled, to see her happy and open and at peace. He didn’t think he’d ever get tired of seeing that, of seeing her in her radiance, grinning like they were the only two in the universe. He tries to ignore the way he just wants to…be near her, to catch the rays of her presence. The opposite of Icarus, he thinks, wanting only to see the sun, to love it from a distance, never daring to fly too close. Reveling in her warm hands near his, her sunset over the horizon smile, her sharp intelligent eyes saying so many things in a language he wants to learn and could never hope to know…_

_He cuts his thumb and curses loudly, jumping back from his station and grabbing for a tea towel._

_Taako doesn’t even look up from his bizarre editing. “The whole of creation knows you’re a romantic, Barry, but cha’boy is really fond of that cutting board and if you get your gross, sappy blood all over it, I’ll have to get revenge.”_

_He hisses in pain and runs the wound under the tap. “Wh—romantic? Taako, what are you even talking about?”_

_The elf snorts. “Same thing we talked about the other day; you’ve got time to sort out all of your many, many feelings. Nothin’ but time, my man, so don’t get distracted by gooey sentimentality and ruin my kitchen supplies.”_

_“Oh my bad,” he says sarcastically. “Next time I accidently cut my finger off, I’ll do it over Lup’s stuff.”_

_“One, like you wouldn’t know how to put your finger back on again, Mister Necromancer, and two, sounds like a plan.”_

_He chuckles and then sighs, taking his hand back and turning off the water. The cut isn’t super deep, and its bleeding has slowed, but it looks gross. Serves him right for wishful thinking._

_“This…this is pretty bad, huh?”_

_Taako doesn’t even ask if he means the cut or the crush. He’s Taako, and for some reason that just means he **knows**. “My dude, you’ve deffo got it bad.”_

_“Sorry. This is probably the most awkward thing in the world, huh?”_

_“Nah.” Taako finally looks up from his work, and the look he gives him is unmistakably brotherly but otherwise unreadable. “People happen to people, Barold, nothing we can do about that,” he says slowly. “She just…happened to you a little harder.”_

_“A force of nature.”_

_“An unstoppable force of fuckin’ nature.”_

_“Huh.”_

_“Mmhm. Just try and roll with it, Mister Immovable Object. And maybe do it away from my cutting board.”_

_Barry laughs._

_A minute later, Lup enters to find them both laughing, but never asks to get in on the joke._

* * *

There aren’t many ways to fend for yourself in an inn. They don’t let you back into the kitchens when you’re just a guest, so it’s either bring your own provisions, or hope the owners know a good chef. But Barry has no idea how to make anything more than a sandwich and crappy, weak tea, so he takes to asking the innkeeper to send up a bowl of that evening’s hearty soup and a cup of chamomile to his room, and tips her well for doing what he certainly can’t.

The inn is small, a village fifteen miles out of Rockport called Hathhaven, and there aren’t many new people who come wandering in because of this. People who stayed in this inn either meant to stay for a while, or owned it. His arrival a week ago was a shock to them all.

And probably even a bigger shock to Barry, himself.

He looks over some notes at a table near the door, shuddering a bitt every time the winter wind, and thumbs the strange coin in the pocket of his pants.

_“Stay at the in outside of Rockport. You’ll know it when you see it. There is a canyon east of that, a day and a half’s cart ride if you don’t stop to rest. It uh. Kind of came out of nowhere, and the man who found it seemed to think it was right out of his dreams. This won’t mean much to you, not yet, but if it is what I think it is, you need to look for a man with a monocle that screams “Touch Me.” And then you’re gonna have to take it from him.”_

The coin, weirdly enough, has a lot of information on him, and is certainly his voice, but he doesn’t remember getting it for himself, or leaving any messages. It’s a little strange, but he doesn’t have much memory of anything before that cave either, so he trusts it.

Plus it’s him. Who would he trust more upon waking up than himself?

What’s a little strange though, he thinks as he scans a map he’s apparently draw for himself, is the fact that it never ever uses proper nouns when talking about this mission he’s supposed to be on, only his name and some city names. He never says the name of the thing he’s looking for, only who or what it might be near. He never goes into detail about the look of the thing, just vague comparisons to things the item looks close to.

He’s also apparently looking for someone, but he never uses her name. Just the word “she.”

But at the opening of the coins message, he explains the unexplainable weight in his chest and the yearning for something he doesn’t remember, a love that apparently defines and redeems him, and so he listens to himself, even if he’s being more than a bit cryptic.

In the present though, he’s fingering the coin that went quiet six days ago, and he’s looking at this map like he understands it, even though none of it feels familiar.

It’s late by the time he gives in, plots his course for the next morning, and goes to the bar to ask the younger daughter of the innkeepers to send up a bowl of soup to his room, and bids her good night.

He’s turning to ascend the stairs to his room when his eyes catch a shape in the darkened corner of the inn’s common area. The fire from the large hearth doesn’t touch this area, and for a moment Barry thinks that it’s almost doing that deliberately.

From what he can see, the man is a half-elf, and is dressed extravagantly. He obviously can’t catch the eye color, but the seem to _glow_ , and nope, Barry is out of there. No thank you. He’s up to his neck in weirdness as is, and whoever this fella is, well, they can stay strangers. He nods to him quickly, out of politeness, and takes the steps two at a time to get to his room faster.

He locks the door, and sighs.

He’s not sure why, but for some reason he breathes out, “That was close,” and leans his head against the rough wood.

“Closer than you’d think, Mr. Hallwinter.”

Barry isn’t exactly Mr. Dignified, and he’s never been under any delusion that he radiates poise or calm or anything else. But he tries to keep himself together when he can, and he prides himself on being convincingly level headed in the face of danger.

So screaming as he did hearing the weird, accented voice behind him was more disappointing than anything else in the retrospective.

The man from downstairs is in his room, somehow, and he looks like a cat cornering the canary. His smile is predatory, his eyes are a glowing, dangerous red, and his fingers are dancing around a scythe shaped like a raven’s skull accept it’s much, much larger, and it make his sick to his stomach to look at, because he’s read about things like this—he’s a necromantic theorist for the most part—but he’d never had proof that Grim Reapers existed.

“Fuck,” Barry shouts, kind of, more in shock than a real curse. He’s trembling, and his wand is on the other side of the room. “Holy…holy shit.”

The Reaper watches him for a moment, and then raises an eyebrow. “You certainly look more frightened than last we met.”

Barry presses himself against the wall, opens his mouth to speak, but the Reapers words stop him. He’s…never seen this thing before. Never ever, and if he had, he’d have done some intense research about the after life and the effects of bringing something dead across planes (this Reaper had to be jumping planes, right?).

The Reaper clucks his tongue, chastising, and continues. “Of course, somehow you’ve acquired flesh, which I must remind you is against the law. You’ve never seemed to care about that before, but really, possessing a body?” he traces the blade of his weapon. “I’m one-hundred percent adding that to your ever growing list of crimes.”

Barry balks. He’s never, _ever_ , done anything against the…the…who was it, the goddess of death? He couldn’t remember. But he was a necromancer in theory only! Never, ever practice—besides maybe the random resurrection of an animal he’d accidently killed. But those were for a good cause!

“Something on your mind, Hallwinter?” he asked, tilting his head. “You’re quiet. I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen you without a comeback.”

Barry opens his mouth, but no sound comes out. His wand is still across the room, but his legs are shaking too badly to make a leap for it.

“And no, before you ask, I wasn’t tracking you. I have a bounty I’m waiting for to get off work. You just happened to be here. The Lady Istus has her strange ways of controlling fate, even for the dead, it seems.”

He finds his voice, finally. “Am I dead?” And asks the stupidest question known to man, what the _fuck…_

The Reaper looks shocked but amused. “Well, yes,” he says slowly. “I mean, well, currently you’re undead. You’re a litch. We both know this. Don’t think you can play dumb with me.”

Barry can feel himself pale, and he hears his breath hitch, and for some reason things go fuzzy and weird, and distantly, so far off it might just be the winter wind, he thinks he can hear static, and a woman’s laugh, and then louder static.

He’s pressing himself against the wall for a different reason now; he’s not sure he can stand.

How the fuck is he a litch? When had he done this? He _hasn’t_ done this, is the only answer, because he’d be up to his neck in crazy town, and he feels pretty sane, current circumstances notwithstanding.

“You…” he huffs. Inhales. Tries again. “You…you have the wrong guh….guy, man. I’m. It. I can’t be a…ah…uh, a litch it…” he’s seriously going to pass out.

The Reaper sounds confused. “You…are Sildar Halwinter, yes? Mostly known as Barry Bluejeans?”

He nods.

“Then you are a litch, and we’ve fought before. About half a year back.”

Barry shakes his head. “Sorry, uh. Uh, I don’t think I caught your, uh, your name? I. No, don’t tell me, but uh.” He swallows and shakes his head. “Do you mind if I sit down? My head feels like it’s going to explode.”

“By all means.” The Reaper gestures to the bed. “Are you…alright?”

Barry takes a deep breath. Sitting helps, but he’s still…still seeing everything through a bubble, kind of. Everything is muffled, and the static is louder.

“I’m not a litch,” he says softly. “I don’t think you’re in the right room, man. S-sorry.”

The Reaper stares at him. “Do you not remember me at all?” he asks, incredulous.

Barry shakes his head. The fog isn’t clearing. “Sorry to say I haven’t met any Grim Reapers in my travels.” At least, not that the coin has told him.

The Reaper takes a step back. When Barry looks at him, he looks confused. “You genuinely think you’re living?”

“I…I _am_ living, I’m telling you. I wouldn’t do that to myself.” He has no reason to. Unless he had no choice, unless it was necessary, he would never undergo the process of litchification. It’s hard, and it’s dangerous, and it’s mostly suicide.

A book appears in the Reaper’s hand, and he flips through it urgently. “Right here. Sildar Halwinder, otherwise known as Barry Blue jeans wanted for—“ And the there is actual, literal static. Peppered with words that he can hear like “and” or “accounts”, but static everywhere else.

There must be something on Barry’s face, because the Reaper puts his book away and looks as distraught at Barry feels. “You have no memory of me. Of…that.”

He shakes his head. It aches. His chest aches. His voice hurts. The sound of static echoes in his ears.

“By Our Lady,” the Reaper whispers, and then there is a tearing sound, and then silence. Barry doesn’t look up from the floor to investigate what happened.

The soup arrives a moment later, and the mother and owner of the inn gives him a sympathetic look and tells him to get some rest.

Barry nods.

The soup grows cold, and Barry feels sick to his stomach that night.

He leaves for the maps destination two day’s later, instead of when he’d planned, and until he dies again, he does everything with a sense of urgency in his actions, and static in the back of his brain when he thinks a bit too much.

* * *

  _The first time she kisses him, it’s like he’s blooming from the inside out, glowing, flying, falling, dancing, diving. Like he’s come up for air when he hadn’t known he’d stopped breathing. It’s precious, and slow, and beautiful, a wave against a rocky shore, a sunset over a quiet field, raw, powerful, quiet, serene. She is so, so beautiful, and she kisses him behind the Conservatory. They smile into it and press close to each other, and it says everything that they’ve only said in past actions to each other, creates a language that is only theirs._

_He loves her. He loves her he loves her he loves her._

_And she, in some crazy twist of fate, loves him back._

* * *

He misses her terribly. There are some days when he is a litch that he just can’t move from the mouth of is cave. Days when he can’t push himself to find her, to look for the relics, days when he just has to sit and mourn people who aren’t dead as far as he knows, but might as well be when he’s unable to remember them.

He misses them. He misses _her_ , gods, he misses her and it _hurts_.

It’s been a year since he’d run into the reaper when he’d been unable to remember, and three-ish since he’d started living his life like this.

He misses everyone.

He’s watching the sky of this plane, mapping the constellations that aren’t familiar, wishing for Lup’s mind to tell him what he should do next.

He wants to find Lucretia, but he hasn’t been able to track anything the way she tries to track him. If she’s looking for him, she remembers, and if she remembers, she knows how to fix this.

He wants to find her so they can find their family.

He wants to find Lup so they can find Lucretia, so they can find the missing chunk of their family.

He hates feeling this lonely. Year after year. Hates it.

There is a commotion from far away, and Barry signs. A necromancer den had set itself up close by a few months back, and has been nothing but a pain in his ass since then. They’re loud and inexperienced, and they say spells wrong and do the rituals even worse.

He looks to see three figures fighting, two against one, and leans a head on his skeletal hand. Might as well enjoy the show.

The biggest one is easily ten feet tall, a shambling thing with half a brain—probably literally—and Barry classifies it as an ogre, an undead one at that. They raised an ogre. Big deal.

The person behind it—probably one of the necromancers—seems to be trying to get it to defend him, and even shouts something at it before ducking it’s meaty fist.

The third figure is fighting the both of them. Out of the three, he’s definitely the best fighter. He’s weaving in and out between the feet and fists of the ogre, twirling his scythe, his cape fanning around him as he beats back both of his adversaries.

Because, naturally it’s the Reaper. He looks to be having trouble, despite it all, but of course it’s him because the bastard is hell-bent on dragging Barry to jail

He sighs.

“Gods help me,” he mutters, standing. He takes his time hovering over to the fight. It’s out of boredom and that awkward sense of being misplaced that he goes to even the odds. Maybe it will all be over by the time he gets there, the Reaper would be dead, and he could move on with his existence.

Wishful thinking.

The ogre, of course is bigger in person, and it’s not quite when he’d first thought. There are bits of this thing that are certainly an ogre, but some of it is a different kind of flesh, the seams of the patches invisible with some kind of magic. His eyes follow the beast up and up until he notices the emerald inset in its head, between two blank, mismatched eyes.

It’s ogre sized, yes, but this thing is a handmade golem. Barry’s face splits into an impressed grin despite himself.

The necromancer is screaming something at the Reaper, who is heading for him. “The head! The head! Get the _head_!”

Naturally he doesn’t listen, and turns away from the kid to dodge the golem’s foot before trying to slice open the back of the knees.

Barry reaches out his hand and does what he’s being told to do. The red lightening arcs and bounces off of the thing’s chin, sending it reeling back.

The Reaper and the necromancer look up at him, and he cups his spectral hands over his mouth to shout, “Aim for the _head_ , you idiot!”

“I _know_ , I speak _Common!_ ” is the Reaper’s response.

The fight ends a minute later, the Reaper having dug out the gem with his scythe, and the kid necromancer—who’s a young halfling, he notices—watching him clean it off and examine it while catching his breath on the cool grass.

“Did you make that?” Barry asks conversationally.

The kid shakes their head, and his hood falls further over his face. “Not…just me. My uh. I have…had some friends. There were fourteen of us. We just wanted to see if it would work.”

Barry nodded. “Gotta say, that was wicked awesome.”

“I…thanks.” There’s a smile in the kid’s voice. “I didn’t do much. Provided some of the bodies to stitch this thing together. Did some of the chanting.” Another shrug. “It’s not my specialty. I’m better at alchemy.”

Barry’s smile widens. “Ah yes, the other side of the magical sciences.”

They laugh together at that, and the Reaper interrupts them, looking absolutely enraged.

“You—“

“Me,” says Barry.

“You _fucking_ piece of work, you think you can waltz in here, up to my bounty—“

“Whoa, wait a fuckin’ minute,” Barry snaps. “I can’t talk to people now?”

“No!”

“Since when was that against the rules?”

“Since _now_ , you red-robed, sneaky little—“

The kid clears his throat from the ground and removes his hood. And fuck, but it is a kid, plain in face with dark hair falling over his eyes. “You uh…you two are friends?”

“No,” Barry answers quickly. “Believe it or not, I’m the nice one.”

The Reaper looks three seconds away from strangling him. “Don’t give him ideas. Being a litch isn’t _nice,_ it is one of the purest of evils.”

“You’re a litch?” the kid asks, looking wide-eyed toward Barry.

He nods. “I am. Wouldn’t recommend doing that though.” He makes himself semi-corporeal and reaches out a hand to help him up. “You got a name, man?”

“Uh…” he hesitates, glancing over at the Reaper.

“He knows it already,” Barry explains. “I’m Barry. It’s nice to meet you…?”

“Robbie,” the kid says slowly. He opens his mouth to say more, but there is a scythe in his face before he can, and instead Robbie gasps and raises his hands.

“Hey now…” Barry cautions. It falls on deaf ears.

“For crimes against the afterlife, you are charged with aiding in necromantic activity and the theft and binding of souls to a reanimation gem. By order of the Raven Queen, you are sentenced to spend the rest of your days in the Eternal Stockade for rehabilitation and eventual passing on into the Sea of Souls.”

“I…I…” the kid is speechless, and looks close to tears. “I didn’t…”

“Dude,” Barry chides, “leave him alone. He knows what he did was wrong.”

“Stay out of this, Hallwinter, you’re next.”

Barry groans and turns to the halfling. “You stole some souls, huh?”

Robbie looks at him frantically, and shakes his head. “No! No, we—no! We took _one_ soul.”

Barry rears back at that. Okay, maybe it was a little more than impressive, given that it was actually true. “Sorry kid but whatever they told you? Can’t be. That body was, like, colossal. You’d need a few to animate that thing.”

Robbie nods. “We knew that. We wanted to prove that you could add arcana to a soul that wasn’t yours to recreate a litch's energy without immortality.”

He is stock still a moment, mouth agape, because holy shit, that’s one weirdo experiment, and then Barry laughs. “No shit!”

Robbie nods. “Kenereth—that uh, that was our leader—she said we could take a soul and kind of roll it like dough? Until it gets bigger? Which I mean, it worked, but…”

“It made it more of a thrall than a cognitive being, yeah.” Barry nods. “You know, I think you just miscalculated?”

Robbie tilts his head, thinking. “I don’t know; we had some really decent calculations, and several people had come to the same conclusion.”

“Well sure, but I be you didn’t think about the area of the shell you needed to fill, instead like…” he snaps his fingers, thinking. “You had a human soul?”

“For sure, yeah.”

“Try a giant’s or a—“

“Ahem.” They both glance at the reaper. “You done? Are you done now? Do you mind if I continue?” he asks Barry sharply. “I’m a sort of doing a thing?”

Robbie sighs, and Barry frowns. “You’re certainly hankering to slice into some halfing kid, aren’t you?”

“I do not _slice into—“_

Barry ignores him. “How old are you, buddy?”

“Seventeen,” says Robbie, softly.

“See? He’s just a child,” he snaps, “who aided in something he didn’t fully understand, something none of them did.”

The Reaper turns to him and glowers. “A necromancer is a necromancer.”

“He’s not a necromancer. He’s an alchemist who fell into a group of ‘em.” He’s about to ask for a pardon for the kid, but he doesn’t think that will work if Robbie is still in the vicinity. If he can distract the Reaper though, he might feel more inclined to ask his goddess. “You just swing the weapon first and ask questions later, don’t you?”

The Reaper, though slowly, does pull the weapon back from Robbie’s neck and turns fully to Barry. His eyes are wide and furious, and the smile he’s wearing seems about ready to snap forward like a rubber band. “Explain to me how you think this job works.” He tilts his head, and it’s a calculated movement, like a predator watching it’s meal limp forward. “I’m curious, because if you think you’re so damn qualified, maybe you can do it.”

Barry crosses his arms and takes this moment to step in front of Robbie. Hopefully the kid is smart enough to take the out he’s giving him. “From what I’ve experienced so far? You don’t do much. Stand around. Get your as kicked. Twirl a scythe.” He shrugs and crosses his arms. “I don’t even think you have any real jurisdiction here. The kid aided in some necromancy, but that’s like arresting a cabbage salesman for selling food to a cook that poisoned it.”

“ _In what way_?” the Reaper shouts, holding out the now-dull emerald. “Do you know what this is?”

“Hm.” He makes like he’s contemplating his answer, draws it out a bit. “Hundred and fifteen gold pieces at the right store?”

“This gem bound a human soul into a body that was not its to inhabit,” the Reaper shout-explains, gripping onto the thing so tightly Barry thinks he might break it. “A soul that was resting and enjoying their afterlife was ripped from the Astral Plane to be stretched and warped and shoved into a new body.”

Barry winces and nods. “So far, that sounds about right.” It didn’t look good for Robbie though.

The Reaper continues to rant. “What if it had been someone close to you, Hallwinter? A friend? A lover? Their soul shredded and stretched for someone else’s science experiment?”

Barry almost hits him then, almost stops him there, because she is not _dead_ , none of them are, even if it feels like it most days—but he doesn’t. The Reaper is speaking in hypotheticals because he doesn’t know better, and Barry is getting caught up on words like ”dead” because…because…

“So give him a warning and get on with your life,” he grounds out instead, trying to keep himself calm.

The Reaper waves his scythe in front of Barry’s face, and he feels a familiar wave of nausea as the holy object swings close to him. “Why do you defend such heartless actions?” the Reaper continues. “It is _flagrantly_ disregarding the rules my Queen has set down for the living. You do not steal from the Sea of Souls, you do not create new life without taking one back, for balance’s sake, and you do _not_ defend little _hellions_ who—“

His eyes flick over Barry’s shoulder and Barry can tell without turning around that Robbie is now long gone.

“Maybe now that he’s taken my distraction for what it’s worth, you can cool down and think about second chances?”

The Reapers eyes bulge. “You…you…” His scythe vanishes, and he takes a bracing step back. “You son of a bitch!” And then he’s launching himself at Barry, meaning to tackle him, and Barry has a spilt second to make himself incorporeal again so that the Reaper will fly right through him.

He does, and he lands hard in the grass, face first. He doesn’t move for several minutes, and Barry is about to leave him be, defeated, when the Reaper groans rolls onto his back, sputtering out grass and dirt.

“Sorry,” Barry says, trying not to laugh.

The Reaper shuts his eyes. “You are an insufferable, horrible being, a pain in my neck, and the scourge of The Raven Queen and all her disciples. I will either one day see your demise or I will be it.”

Barry chuckles and moves to sit across from the Reaper’s prone form. He’s…struck by how dramatic and over the top he is, and how if he wanted to see the very definition of insufferable, he should meet Lup when she got going.

It was one of the reasons he loved her.

It is still one of those reasons.

The thought isn’t an infrequent one. “She’d have loved this,” or “she would say this,” are common, everyday thoughts now, and they came with the hole in his existence.

It is because of Lup, because she would find this as funny as he does, that he sits down calmly and asks, “Can we start this over?” He tries not to laugh at the quick, sharp _No_ he gets. “I’m Barry Bluejeans. I’m a litch, and I’m kinda sorry for being a thorn in your side.”

The Reaper lets out a slow, deliberate breath and stares up at the night sky. The stars are partially covered by clouds now. “Kravitz. Bounty hunter, loyal servant of the Raven Queen.”

Barry grins a little. “Nice to meet you.”

“Wish I could say the same.”

Barry nods. He deserves that. “Rude.”

Kravitz nods, and his shoulder shrug against the ground. “Never claimed to be anything but.”

There is a tense silence between them as the creatures of the night when back to their nightly activities, calling to one another and scurrying through the night.

“I’m guess in you aren’t going to drop this bounty,” Barry sighs.

The being before him lifts his head a little to stare at him incredulously. “You’re out of your mind.”

Worth a shot. “I just figured I’d ask.”

Kravitz groans again. “I’m taking it you’re not coming willingly.”

“I’m not.”

“Why.” It is not formed as a question, but a demand, and for a second he’s not sure if this man Kravitz or the Raven Queen is asking.

So he hesitates. There isn’t much he’s willing to tell him, and even though the man is undead, he’s not sure what he’d be able to hear. The Voidfish’s power isn’t effective against the dead, but he wants to be cautions, just in case. There are things he doesn’t want the gods involved in, especially when it comes to tracking the Grand Relics, when it comes to the Light of Creation and the pull it has over people. Undead, a god, it doesn’t matter; he’s not chancing any more destruction.

“I’m looking for something.” It’s all he can say. He’s really looking for someone to find the first something so they can look for other somethings, and all the other somethings are a secondary matter until he can find the someone’s something; what he said just saves times and headaches.

As expected, the Reaper growls in annoyance. “If that really is it, I’m hauling you to the Astral Plane as soon as I find the will to move.”

“It’s…it’s a big something,” Barry stutters. “It…look, basically, I need time.”

“Too fucking bad,” Kravitz grumbles. “Five years and you haven’t made any headway.”

“Not true!” he bluffs. Sort of bluffs. He has no means as a lich, and no memory in his mortal body, but he thinks he’s been doing pretty well. “I just need a bit _more_ time. You like deals don’t you? Chess games, cards, riddles, that kind of shit, right?”

The being slings an arm over his face, and Barry grins.

“So what if I do? Don’t tell me you’ve got a chess board on hand and want to play me for your freedom.”

He laughs. “Nah, you’ve got a job to do. But I want to make a deal for what I’m asking for.”

It’s a gamble. It might take him a year to complete the search for Lup, to find the relics and his family, it might take him another century (but gods…gods he hopes not), but he has to try. He can’t have this fucker finding him time and again, and he can’t have a repeat of the inn incident.

“What kind of deal?”

Barry almost shouts in delight. “Give me ten years,” he blurts. It might not be enough time. This it still a stupid idea. “Ten years to find…to find what I’m looking for. Don’t come looking for me, don’t drop in to say hello. If I find what I’m looking for, I’ll find you and you can take me to ghost jail.” He doesn’t want that. He’ll want to spend that time with Lup, trying to piece back together their broken family, trying to track the relics and hide the light.

“That is not what it’s—“

“If the ten years pass…” he trails off. His voice sticks to the roof of his mouth, gums his tongue in place. If this deal is taken and he hasn’t found Lup and her relic in ten years…no one will. Lucretia might put out feelers for it, but she’d be looking for the gauntlet. Not for Lup. (He doesn’t think Lucretia doesn’t _want_ to find Lup. He doesn’t think that at all. But he knows what comes first in her mind, has always come first since the Judge Year and all the years that came after; she wants to protect people before she saves them. And he knows that means putting off the search of her friends in order to track the Grand Relics. For now, Lup is a bonus that comes with her weapon.)

If he is stuck in the Astral Plane doing time for whatever-the-fuck…

It just may be that no one will look for her.

“…If ten years pass,” he tries again, “and I have nothing, then you can come and collect me, and I’ll go quietly.” That’s a lie; he’ll fight harder than he ever has for anything. “You can take me to face the judgment of your goddess.”

There is a heavy silence, Kravitz lying limp in the dirt and grass as he contemplates it, Barry practically vibrating, sitting near his feet. It takes a long time. By the time anything is said, the sky is a lighter blue, the sunrise not far off.

Finally, the Reaper speaks. “The Raven Queen will accept those terms. You will have your ten years. ” His voice is worn. Did he…spend that time actually speaking with her? How creepy. “But I have a question I want answered.”

Barry starts. “Depends on the question.”

Kravitz sits up on his elbows and glares. “I will not protest my Queen’s decision to grant you this time. You either answer, or you’ll be looking at a month of freedom at most.”

Barry swallows. Fuck him. “Fine.”

“Why did you not remember you were a lich? How could you not remember this, when it was done of your own volition?”

Barry doesn’t need to breathe in this form, but he holds his breath and counts to ten anyway. He doesn’t want to answer this. He has to answer this. The Reaper is serious in his threat, and he has no doubt that he’ll take his case to The Raven Queen and shred it to pieces.

“The dead remember,” he sighs, letting out the unnecessary breath. “The living forget.”

“Explain.”

“You know what the Relic Wars are?” he asks softly. Sadly.

“I do.” There is curiosity and slowly dawning horror in Kravitz’s voice.

“Humans were made to forget the relics. And everything to do with them. Do you know how?” 

Kravitz hesitates. “…I do not.”

He won’t out Fisher—something tells him Magnus would kill him thrice over if he did—so he says instead, “A sort of spell. Something very powerful. It was fed the information of the Relics. And…” He’s a bad, bad liar. He’s shaky and unstable, and he frowns so hard he gets dimples when he lies, according to the entirety of the IPRE. Still, he has to try. “And the spell was also given the information of some people. People who were involved with the relics, who knew about them anyway, or knew people who knew about them, they, uh, they had their information fed to the V—the spell.”

“And you knew someone who was involved with the relics.”

Barry doesn’t have a lump in his throat, he really doesn’t. He swallows past it anyway. “Yeah.”

Kravitz stays very quiet, but he seems to have taken his words at face value. Thank the gods.

“When I’m…in a human body, I can’t remember anything about my life previous. I don’t know who I am, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. When you try to remind anyone under this…spell they…they don’t take it well. It’s nothing but static.”

Kravitz’s eyebrows bunch together, and Barry looks away. “That is…a terrible fate.”

“Yeah.”

“Did you know this person who made you forget?”

He thought he did. “No.”

There is a rustle of grass and fabric, and the Reaper is standing again and brushing of his suit and pulling his locs into a ponytail. “Thank you for your sincerity, Hallwinter.”

Barry stands as well. “Thank your Queen for the time.”

A rift is opened, and then zipped shut, and Barry is alone again.

(He does not know why The Raven Queen Gives him time. He won’t ever ask. But she gives it so him because he is plucky, and interesting, and has managed to keep her favorite Reaper at bay for five years and that’s a little funny. So she gives him his time, and hopes to see him when it is over.)


	2. Chapter 2

_The tiny robot zaps him, again, and he sighs._

_“I’m trying to fix your arm, kiddo,” he grunts, shaking out his hand. The robot makes a sound like laughter. “Please let me help.”_

_“Again!” it squeals in delight. “Again!”_

_He sits back down and pokes around the gears in the back. A few wires are older and fraying, which is why the arm of this kid was shaking so bad. He goes in to take one of the wires—_

_ZAP!_

_“Kid!” he hisses. “That one actually hurt!” He sticks his burnt fingers in his mouth._

_“Oh,” the robot says, and sounds upset. “Are you okay? I didn’t mean to burn you!”_

_He waves it off. “No, no, it’s fine. If you’re going to shock me, keep the voltage low, okay?”_

_“Okay.”_

_This goes on for about ten more minutes—fixing things, getting shocked, dropping the tool, going to get the tool, getting shocked—before he hears a laugh behind them, and flushes._

_“Hey, Lup,” he sighs. She grins at him when he turns around, and he waves. Like a doofus._

_“Workin’ hard or hardly workin’?” she asks, pointing to the kid he has open in his lap._

_“Trying to work hard,” he grumbles, and that earns him another playful shock. “Ow.”_

_The robot giggles. “My arm feels a little better now. Can I go back and play?”_

_Barry rubs his wrist as Lup takes a seat beside him. “Don’t you want it to feel a lot better?” he asks gently. “That way you can play with maximum power?”_

_“Oh! Yes!” the robot cheers. “Yes, please!”_

_And the cycle starts over again._

_By the time he’s done, an hour and a half passes. He sets the bot down, and it hugs his leg before zooming away down the street, wiggling its repaired arm in delight._

_“That was kind of you,” Lup says softly._

_He almost forgot she was there. She’d been so quiet, watching him, only occasionally asking the kid questions about their family and friends, all of which the robot enthusiastically answered. “Nah,” he says with a shrug. “Not really.”_

_“I would have given in after the first shock,” Lup tells him._

_“Wrong,” Barry tells her. “You’re too patient. You might have had a firmer hand, though.”_

_Lup snorts. “You think?”_

_“Of course. You’re good with that kind of thing.”_

_This time she laughs. He loves her laugh. “What kind of thing?”_

_Barry shrugs and blushes. “Handling things with uh…I don’t know. Handling people I guess. Or robots. Whatever. You’re just…kind. You could have done that no problem.”_

_He looks up at her, and she’s looking back at him wearing this…look. It’s warm and curious and sad and scared and elated and Barry wants to ask, but he doesn’t. Lup looks at him the way love sometimes feels, but he doesn’t say anything, because well. Wishful thinking. He knows that’s not it, not what she’s feeling._

_“You should seek out Merle for that burn,” she says, and her voice sounds off, but she smiles at him and he doesn’t ask why. “I’m gonna go find Taako. I have something I have to ask him.”_

_Barry nods. “Be safe out there Lup. See you.”_

_“Yeah,” she says, and it’s in that strange voice, and he looks up to see her looking back at him over her shoulder. “See you, Barry.”_

* * *

He is a litch when he takes a day to check on Merle. It’s six months into his deal. He’s taking a day to check on his friend now that he’s found him, only to see that there are two children in his place, and a woman, but no Merle. He worries, and paces, but he knows he’s got to return and keep looking. He hopes, for Merle’s sake, he knows what he’s doing.

He is a litch with a near finished body the day he hears about Glamor Springs. It’s a year and three months into his deal. He sees the carnage, the faded wagon indents in the dirt, and fears for Taako. There are several people there who are identifying bodies with horrid cries of grief. He notices a hooded woman in blue robes disappear into the crowd, and almost screams for her to turn around. He knows it's Lu, but his anger is drowned out with his own horror for Taako. He almost follows the wagon marks, almost tries to track down places Sizzlin’ Up With Taako has been, and start looking for his brother, but he knows he must return and keep looking.

He is human when he hears about the triumph of Raven’s Roost, before he made the deal. He is human when he hears about the tragedy as well. It is two years into his deal. He does not look into it, but he does send out prayers for those who were lost to vengeful flames. He dies three months after, drowns because he’s forgotten he knows how to swim, and screams that night for the possible loss of his brother, curses his sister for her stupidity, for her selfishness. He wants to march to Raven's Roost and find out Magnus has survived, but he must keep looking.

He is a litch when he feels the thrall of his bell in the Felicity Wilds. It is two and a half years into his deal. He almost sprints after it, almost dives into whatever trap has surrounded it. But there is an obsidian circle miles away from there, and he’s only passing through, and he can’t get side tracked. He’s pissed and upset and scared because this forest is dangerous, and how is his bell _here_? But he moves on, and keeps looking.

He is human when he finds himself looking at the two moons and thinking they're lovely. It is two years and ten months into his deal. He sees things head toward it sometimes, but his brain goes a little fuzzy when he thinks too hard about it, so he follows his coin and doesn’t think on it again. When he is a litch soon after, a little into three years under this deal, he remembers every location he’s seen the objects float from, and the direction they floated toward, and starts triangulating on the same map he’s tracking the gauntlet’s whereabouts. He knows when he is dead that the second, smaller moon is new.

It’s all so slow, but he’s making headway now.

It has been eight years since his fall from the Starblaster. It’s been three years and some months into his deal with The Raven Queen and Kravitz.

It’s eight years and nine months later after his fall, three years and some months into his deal when his coin tells him to find Gundren Rockseeker and stick to him like glue. Stay with him and protect him.

He meets his family soon after this even though he doesn’t know it, and they’re rude and they don’t really get along, but hey. Gundren knows his cousin can fight with his holy words, and knows his friends can do some damage, even though one looks a little hair trigger and the other looks a little haunted.

All he knows is that he’s somehow got to get to Wave Echo Cave. So he follows.

* * *

 

_“Barry?”_

_Barry looks up from his book to see Lucretia lingering in the doorway. She’s always so polite, even in her newfound boldness. Her hair is pulled into a tight, kinky ponytail, and her eyes are wide and curious and sad._

_“Hey, Lu,” he says, patting the spot on the couch next to him. “What’s up?”_

_“Do you have a minute?” she asks. She looks…scared? Hesitant? Worried, he decides. “I…didn’t want to ask Lup. Taako has been grilling her all cycle, and she’s napping it off right now.”_

_He nods, and she sits close to him. Lucretia is a year older than Magnus, who left the mission when he was nineteen. She’s twenty, with eighty-three years of immortality behind her, and sometimes she looks and acts so old he’s surprised her face doesn’t gain wrinkles on principle._

_But right now she looks her age, young and upset and wide-eyed. He sets his book down and turns to face her. “What’s the matter?”_

_She tires to give him a smile. The problem with knowing someone too well is knowing when their smiles are fake. Lucretia is a very good liar, almost as good as Lup or Taako, but there are always ways of knowing. The tightness in their eyes. The tremble of their bottom lip._

_“Lucretia,” Barry says slowly, “what’s wrong?”_

_She sighs. “Nothing? Nothing, not…really.”_

_“Sounds like something.”_

_She bites her lip and shuts her eyes. Curls her hands into fists. “Did you and Lup really become liches, or are you just fucking with us?” It comes out in a rush of air, like she had to force the words through her teeth before her lips closed around them._

_Barry leans back a bit at the question. It’s been nearly a month into the new cycle, and the last few minutes before Reset, Lup had flung herself like a madwoman off the ship and destroyed a column of sparkling darkness with her light, sending it right up into the hunger._

_He’d choked on a scream anyway, even though she was already technically dead and would have been back on the ship in ten minutes._

_But he understands. Lucretia…she is someone who wants nothing more to protect the people she loves. Magnus can do that, was hired to do that as head of security; he’s got brawn to spare, and is rushing in to fight after fight like a maniac to protect._

_Lu’s heart is just as big, but she is much smaller than he is. She protects them in smaller ways, with her mind and shield and words. But he can understand that not feeling like enough._

_Especially when he and Lup did technically create the world’s most bizarre wedding vows. (She insisted on calling it that halfway through research. She’s ridiculous. He loves her, but she’s absolutely ridiculous."To hell with ‘until death do us part,’” she had said, “’till death to us both,’ more like. How goth is that, babe?”)_

_Barry sighs and hangs his head. He’s smiling a bit, but it’s probably uncalled for. “Yeah,” he answers. “We did. That was…a real and permanent thing we did, and no, it does not reset when we do.”_

_Lucretia looks like she’s going to either shout or burst into tears. He’s prepared for either. Taako had shouted at Lup a little after the process out of worry. Then got a little weepy and punched him in the arm._

_“Why?” she asks. “Did…did you think there was no other way? I don’t want you to regret your decision, Barry, I think that what you and Lup did was scary but bold. But I don’t understand.”_

_Barry, very carefully so not to startle he closer to tears, puts an arm around Lucretia’s shoulders to draw her in._

_“It really sucks being dead for a year,” he starts, and she nods. “Long story short, we thought that it would be easier if…if we were able to help even after the fact that we died. We have a focus, we’re able to keep our heads because of each other. Because of you guys, too. We have that much more power because of it.”_

_“But you’re dead,” she argues._

_“Undead, actually. I’m pretty sure, with our wonderful reset button, we’re actually immortal.”_

_She doesn’t laugh at the joke. Instead, she presses a hand to her mouth and shuts her eyes. Trying to keep it together. He hugs her closer._

_“When I write about these years,” she whispers after a moment, “I write about both our successes and our failures to capture the light. I don’t downplay or highlight anything we do. It’s part of being an accurate chronicler.”_

_“I know,” he says, nodding._

_“I always write the truth. No matter how much it stings. As much as I can.”_

_“I know.”_

_“And when I don’t know something, when I don’t understand, I look for all of the information that I can on it, and try to make sense of it, because someday, I believe someone will read these and they deserve to know.”_

_Barry draws his eyebrows together. “Where are you going with this Lucretia?”_

_“I don’t know what to call this, Barry!” she shouts it and pulls way to stand and pace. He watches, shocked. “I don’t fucking know what to call this! You and Lup killed yourselves to gain an advantage against an enemy we cannot defeat! What is that? A success? Did we get more power, better allies? An asset to our limited strengths? Or is this a failure because my family had to do some so horribly dangerous…so…you…and you die, the process kills you, I’ve read about it, you…” she presses her hands against her mouth to muffle her tears. “I can’t count this as a failure, but I don’t know why anyone would call this a win.”_

_Barry is off the couch and wrapping her in his arms as best he can. She’s a little taller than he is, and it’s a little awkward, but Lucretia is pressing her head against his shoulder and sobbing, so it will have to do._

_“It’s a win,” she tells her. “It’s a win, because two less people will die per year. It’s a win, Lu, it’s okay.”_

_“How is it a win? I feel like I’ve lost you both.”_

_“We’re both right here, Lu,” he soothes. “We’re both right here, I’m solid and real and so is Lup. She’s taking a nap, you saw her go and do that. We’re okay.”_

_“You’re dead.”_

_“Less dead now, and for the rest of my life.”_

_She shakes her head and takes a shuddering breath. “I’m so sorry,” she whispers fiercely. “I’m so sorry. To you. To Lup. You shouldn’t have had to make this an option, should have never had to do this…”_

_“The more you blame yourself for something we actually wanted to do,” he tells her, “the more failures we’ll have. Everything will feel like a loss if you look at the glass half empty.”_

_“And everything rings false if you put on rose tinted glasses,” she argues. “You can’t be objective if you’re too positive about everything.”_

_“Why not? Merle does it.”_

_“He’s an exception. That dwarf is probably half gnome.”_

_“As opposed to the gnome on our crew who is so deadly serious sometimes he looks like his face will actually split in half when he smiles?”_

_His joke does its job. She’s laughing a little by the time Magnus finds them._

_“Everything a-okay in here?”_

_Barry nods. “Lucretia was just feeling a little down about…” he trails off, but Magnus gives a knowing nod. (Magnus thought it was fucking amazing, and asked if he could try. It was met with an overall vote of “fuck no,” but he said it didn’t hurt to ask.)_

_“Getting sad about our lichy boy, Lu?” he asks, opening his arms for a hug._

_Barry let his friend go, and she switches over to hug Mags. “No. I had something in my eye.”_

_“’Course,” Magnus says, lifting her up and over his shoulder. Lucretia shrieks and Barry snorts. “Anyway, I came to get you both. Taako is making I’m-sorry-for-drilling-you-on-lich-trivia brownies for when Lup is finished sleeping, and they’re almost in the oven. I was hoping he’d let someone lick the spoon, but he said my puppy dog face wasn’t cute enough to make that happen, so I have to borrow one of the other humans.”_

_Lucretia is laughing fully now and trying to wriggle away from her current predicament. “Put me down! I refuse to be used as a means of bribing our chef!”_

_Barry shakes his head and plays along. “No dice. Everybody knows you have the best puppy dog face out of the three of us, Lu.”_

_“Plus Taako has a soft spot for you because you’re tiny and you share,” Magnus agrees. He waves an arm toward the doorway. “After you, good sir.”_

_“Why, thank you, my good man,” Barry jokes, stepping past him._

_Lucretia complains the whole time, including when she takes the spoon from Taako—read, takes, she does not beg for it, but Taako is tired of hearing Magnus whine—but she’s smiling, and looks a little more relaxed._

_They weren’t okay. Of course not, eighty three years of dying and resetting and saying goodbye would never, ever make them okay again. But they were going to be, someday._

_Lup wasn’t the only one who had to believe that._

_They all did._

* * *

 

One good thing about this: at least he knows that everyone is alive and well and that they found each other. Taako isn’t dead or arrested, Merle is fine and dandy, and Magnus is alive. They didn’t know each other, sure, but it all seems fine.

One other good thing about it: They found the Phoenix Fire Gauntlet! Kinda!

One bad thing about this: Fuck Gundren Rockseeker, that fucking fuck, if he could reach into the afterlife and punch his stupid, selfish ghost ass he would. Fucking asshole. Fucking idiot. Destructive, crazy, greedy sonofabitch.

He was so. Fucking. Close! He doesn’t know where it was or how the boys found it, but they did, or Gundren did and they found Gundren and he wasn’t there, he was here in the inn when that idiot let himself be consumed by greed and the thrall and _fuck!_

He screams. He just…screams. At first he’s enraged at the situation, and then…then he’s just lost.

He screams and rages and feels himself splitting into fragments for just a moment. It feels like his stomach is flipping, or like going up and over a steep hill. It feels like lightning and like quicksand. For a moment, he almost lets himself do it, almost lets himself succumb to it. There was too much, too much happening and he couldn’t make sense of it: why were Taako, Magnus, and Merle with the gauntlet but Lup wasn’t with them, Wave Echo was the place it had to be, they had found it, they had found it somewhere in or around that cave, either with or on Gundren, but it destroyed another town and Lup…wasn’t there so where was she, if they had the glove, where the hell was Lup, how the hell had they been able to find each other and the glove and not her where _was she_ —

He almost truly lets himself lose it.

_Her hands in his hair, the cool of grass at his back._

_“I love you.”_

_Her lips moving to his, her eyes gentle._

_“I love you.”_

_A feeling of happiness and a tiny bit of fear._

_Sunset._

_Lup._

_“I love you.”_

He holds the memory in him and it chokes him, burns his chest like swallowing fire.

But it holds him together. He almost loses it, but he holds, and he’s breathing so hard by the end of it that he thinks he may be sobbing, but without the tears.

This isn’t working. Almost nine years and this isn’t working. He’s done everything he could, but he can’t do this alone. Not…not now. Not anymore. He keeps dying, just out of reach of his goal, and forgetting when he’s human, and going in circles. There will never be a lead like this again. He doesn’t know where else he can look, because if Lup isn’t with her gauntlet, he doesn’t know where she could be. (She can’t be dead she can’t be dead because she’s a litch and she would have been looking for him too because she’d remember, she’s not dead she’s not dead…)

He has to switch gears.

He watches the mysterious sphere rise and head up until the ache in his chest makes him look away.

He’s missed those three. He misses them now. He misses all of them.

But they’re going to where he suspects Lucretia to be. He isn’t sure yet, but he suspects. And as much as he loved her, he’s not sure she can be…trusted to handle them. She’d never hurt them, but she won’t tell them the truth, and that’s what he’s worried about.

He also suspects that she won’t let them have anything to do with him. And that won’t do.

He lies back on the obsidian circle, eyes closed, and thinks this through.

He is trying to find Lup, and through her relic, he thought he’d find her. No dice there; if the boys didn’t find her, she wasn’t there. He needs help with finding the rest of the relics before someone else gets hurt. Before something disappears like Phandalin has today. Magnus, Taako, and Merle will all know more after today, he’s sure. So he has to find them again. He has to make them remember him, even if everything he says is static. Because he needs them.

Alone isn’t working. Alone has earned him around nine more years of alone. Alone has earned him making deals with Grim Reapers and their goddesses for time to search for someone he’s about to stop looking for.

So step one is to triangulate the exact coordinates of Lucretia. Find her, find the why’s.

Step two is to follow his family in the meantime, until he can find a way to execute step one. He trusts them. He knows they won’t let him down, no matter the void in their memory. He has to believe this. They’ll trust him, no matter what happens, no matter what their told.

Step three is to follow the relics with them. If they can’t grab them, he will. He’s not sure what Lucretia will do with them if that is indeed where the others are headed to, but he doesn’t like the idea that she is trying to take care of them on her own.

Step four is Lup. He can’t look for her, not now, not when needs help, not when he’s back where he was eight years ago in terms of where to look. But he can keep her in mind. He can watch out for their family, and he can keep her in his heart until he knows where to look, until they can help him figure out where to look.

He sits up, still recalculating. He has to do this differently now.

Barry just hopes it will work.

* * *

 

_He’s carrying the glassware he’s just washed when those three burst into the ship’s main entrance. Scares the shit out him too, with all the screaming. He almost drops the tray he’s holding._

_“Close it close it close it close it close it!” That’s Taako, screaming at Merle, who was in the lead._

_“I’m tryin’! This thing doesn’t have **speed settings**!” This comes from Merle who is, for all intents and purposes, slamming his hand down on the door-closing button anyway, like it’s going to speed up the process. _

_“Hurry up, hurry up!” Magnus pleads. “They’re gonna throw something in here and we’re gonna blow up, and then we are going to have to wait until next cycle to tell everyone how stupid Taako is!”_

_Well, this wouldn’t be the first time they’d all gotten into some kind of trouble. Hopefully it wasn’t going to bring any danger through their door again._

_“Hey **fuck**_ _you, Cujo, way to call a guy out! Maybe don’t touch so much shit next time!”_

_“ **You** still have the fucking ring! Maybe don’t take shit without paying for it!”_

_“You still have the **what**?” Merle shouts still slamming the button. “This fuckin’ thing—Taako you still have that fuckin’ ring?”_

_“Well I wasn’t about to pause mid-sprint to the ship to take it off, mumpkin! They had swords and throwing axes! Can’t you magic that shit closed?”_

_“Taako, you could have just thrown it over your shoulder and kept going!” Magnus groans._

_“Hindsight is twenty-twenty, bubbeleh, so maybe you should have thrown that new leather satchel at them as a distraction!”_

_Magnus colors. “I panicked!”_

_“You panicked and **stole shit**?” Merle groans. “Pan save both your asses, I swear...”_

_“I got nervous and grabbed something and then ran, I wasn’t thinking!”_

_Outside, there is the sound of shouting and footsteps and metal, and then something closer and rounder and also metal that sounds like it bounces then rolls. It rolls down the ramp that is slowly raising to close them inside, and Barry watches Taako and Magnus exchange a terrified glance before Magnus grabs Merle away from the controls and sprints inside Taako on his heels._

_“Barold, get down!” Taako shouts as he passes, grabbing his sleeve._

_There is a loud bang, heat at his back, and, startled, Barry trips, drops the tray and the glassware, and takes Taako with him. Who takes Magnus down, who is holding Merle under one arm._

_The dust clears, and there is a small fire by the closed bay door that is slowly dying out, and the heap of people on the ground stare at it, wide-eyed._

_It takes Barry five attempts to break the silence. “The hell was that?”_

_“Due process, apparently,” Merle mutters, but he sounds winded._

_Magnus snorts. And then chuckles until it builds into his loud, familiar laugh. “Holy shit! They were really gonna blow us up! That was awesome!”_

_Taako, who Barry realizes he’d_ _been laying on and has now rolled off of, is wheezing with laughter too. “Your face!” he’s saying, clutching is sides and giggling. “You’re fucking **face** , my man, you looked spooked!”_

_“It was a bomb!” Magnus is trying to explain through his laughter. “I didn’t expect them to have explosives, I was being dramatic!”_

_Merle, who is covering his face to muffle his own laughs, tells them both, “Last time I go out with the two of you. Saw my whole damn life flash before my eyes.”_

_This only serves to make them laugh harder._

_Barry stands and gives a moment of silence for his glassware, may it rest in pieces._

_He’s about to ask if they’re going to make a habit of destroying property when Davenport runs in brandishing a fire extinguisher and shouting something about how they “can’t keep doing this,” and “proper planet-side conduct.”_

_Barry smiles instead and goes to find a broom for the broken glass._

* * *

 

This has them written all over it.

He’s in the shadows of an alley near the Neverwinter train station, and he can see the train barreling down on it, and starts channeling his energy into something that could maybe redirect five thousands tons of metal away from the station without hurting the people on board or the people at the station.

The Oculus what supposed to come through here on that train. He’d managed to track down one of the relics to the Rockport Express, but he’s not sure if it’s still aboard, or who exactly its thrall has bewitched, if it’s one of the boys because they don’t remember, or a passenger, or what. All he knows is that the train is coming into the station fast, and that he doesn’t really want to hurt anyone about to stop it.

But it doesn't look like it's gonna stop and he’s just about to launch it off of the tracks when the gate shimmers, and the train is funneled into nothingness, the sound of crunching metal, sparking mechanics, and, oddly enough, broken ceramics and terra cotta echoing.

And then it’s gone.

“What the hell?” is what he says out loud to himself, and watches from the shadows as six people, the leader being a little boy in dirtied, rumpled fancy-boy clothes, head for the station platform, the child talking with the militia as they arrive like he’s done this for years.

He finds himself grinning, despite the confusion. Ten years and they hadn’t changed a bit, it seems.

It looks like Taako is levitating Magnus—unconscious and looking pretty bloody— and both he and Merle look like they’d taken a pretty hard tumble. Taako is carrying something under his arm, but his ridiculous hat is in the way—probably having fallen off in the process of whatever it is they’ve done—and he can’t see it clearly.

“Thanks,” he hears Merle say after asking directions to a hospital. “Woulda done it myself but, spells, don’t got the energy for it right now.”

“You never seem to, how funny is that,” Taako jabs. It’s crueler than he used to be with the old dwarf, and it draws Barry up short. “C’mon, cha’boy wants to get in, get out, get to The Director, and get paid.”

“Ditto.”

He knows that these past nine years has been the work of the Voidfish, and has theorized that it has to be because of Lucretia. It’s the theory that make the most sense, since he hasn’t found her but has felt her find him over the years. That’s who he’s been hiding from. So, if Lucretia is in charge (the Director Taako mentions, that has to be her, right? Who else could it be?), then those three should remember everything now if they drank the ichor. And yet they still don’t seem to know who they are to each other. Which is odd, because they know about the relics, if Taako was able to resist that thrall and throw it into his bag.

He can feel it, of course, the muted thrall of the Oculus, the feeling all the Grand Relics have when someone has bested it. And it’s apparently in Taako’s bag, safe and sound.

The first relic is secure. Check.

They’re together. Check.

But they still don’t remember. That’s devastating.

If they don’t remember each other, they won’t remember him, and so his plan is thrown off kilter for a moment. He can’t find an opening to talk to them.

He has to be patient, he has to be. This wasn’t part of the plan, but he will adapt. He needs to. He wants so badly to reach out, to make them understand, but he has to wait for this to work. Even if that means recalculating.

He watches Merle fiddle with his bracer, watches a glass orb fall from the sky and ascend again with all three of them safely inside with the Oculus. He watches and thinks about everything in order.

They don’t remember each other—that is the first odd thing. Drinking the ichor would be the only way for them to be able to understand and collect the relics.

But drinking the ichor would also have unlocked 100 years of suppressed memories, which it didn’t.

A theory is proposed then, based on this contradiction: there is a second Voidfish. A second Fisher in the years he’s been gone has emerged or been found or something, and has been given their information as a back up plan, so that their memories stay sealed away.

He can’t be sure, not yet, but there is a way to find out.

His next order of business then—those glass balls. Those are connected to the bracers, anybody with a brain and a keen eye can catch on to that once they’ve seen them in use. The ball comes down, and goes back up and brings them to The Director. To, theoretically, Lucretia.

The question then becomes: how does he get in a clear glass ball without being noticed by the entirety of the base and dragged directly to Lucretia?

The answer, he finds, is simple, but easier said than done. He has to find someone with a bracer who he can posses.

“Fuck,” Barry whispers to himself, watching the spot in the sky where the sphere had long since disappeared.

Where the hell did you look for a thing like that?

* * *

It’s midsummer not long after, and there is a rad solar eclipse that’s supposed to be happening.

Barry is in the middle of going over gathered information, looking up possible leads on people involved with those glass orbs and bracers, mapping out the second moons positions day to day, and checking on his still-forming body when he feels it.

He gasps. It’s not a good gasp. It shatters him, and replaces anything in his head, any information he’d been combing over, with pure fear.

He rushes outside, and looks up.

The sky grays during a solar eclipse, and the world cools down some. It’s incredibly cool, normally. The IPRE had been lucky to catch a few in their travels, and it was always similar.

The sky loses its color. The world goes pretty cold. If you’re at a fest, there are ooh’s and ahh’s and goofy glasses, and your family making weird jokes about how on your home world the binary system never allowed for a complete coverage of both suns at the same time.

It does not release a near sonic boom. It does not sound like this horrid fucking cacophony of orchestral mess. It does not sound like billions of whispers from billions of worlds. It does not. Have. Eyes.

Thirty seconds. He has thirty seconds of experiencing a horror he never thought he’d ever have to face again. And then it’s gone.

It’s gone and Barry is left cold, stunned, and terrified.

Fuck the deal he made with the whatever-Queen, fuck the collection of the relics. Just like that, he has no time to coax everything back into careful order.

He’s going to have to slam it all in place as fast as he can like a demented Picasso of a puzzle, because somehow the Hunger has found this world too.

And right now, he might be the only person who knows.

* * *

 

After the eclipse, he’s doing everything with a frantic edge to it. He knows that it might cause some mistakes. He knows that if Lup were here, she’d tell him to take a breather to regroup.

But that was the fucking Hunger, he knows it somehow, he knows, he knows, he _knows._

So he reaches for the first desperate thread and lets that be his lead. He doesn’t know why he does this, but he falls back on it anyway; who was someone he knew to get involved with things they didn’t understand?

Necromancers.

More specifically, an alchemist who said he was helping some necromancers and owed him a favor.

Robbie is in Neverwinter buying some supplies to restock on some potions. The marketplace is a little chilly, despite the season, but people are still jovial, calling out to one another over the din of the mid-day crowd.

It’s pretty picturesque, and if he weren't desperate to test his theory, he might let himself get a little sidetracked by some of the cool bookstores down the road.

He doesn’t though. Robbie thanks the vendors, and weaves through the crowds, and Barry, follows.

He catches the halfling on the edge of the crowd, heading toward the city gates.

Calling home base? You bet.

“Robbie,” he calls. “Robbie, hey, can we talk for a minute?”

The halfing turns around and jumps at the sight of him. And then, cautiously, “Wait a minute.” He squints and leans in. “Dude, you’re that one guy who was friendly with that Reaper I ran into, right? The litch?”

“Yes!” Barry says with false cheer. God this is going to be the weirdest thing he’s ever done, huh? “It’s Barry, in case you forgot. I-it’s been a few years.”

Robbie grins an easy, sleepy grin and nods. “How’s it going, man?”

“Oh, you know,” Barry says with a falsely cheerful shrug of his spectral shoulders. “How are you?”

“Pretty good,” the halfing says. “Straightened my life out. Got a new job, made some knew friends, live on the…” he pauses and clamps his lips shut. “Well, I’m living someplace fuckin’ dope, man, that’s about all I can say.”

Barry takes a deep, unnecessary breath. Here it goes. “Sounds good. Anyway, Robbie? You know how I distracted that Reaper long enough for you to run away and start over?”

Robbie’s smiles widens. “Yeah, man.”

“Well, I sort of think you owe me one, yeah?”

“For sure, dude.”

“Good. I need to borrow your body for like. An hour or two. Sound good?”

Before Robbie can say anything, the feeling of blank shock in his mind is enough for Barry to wiggle in. He takes a hold of Robbie’s shoulders so he can’t fight the possession, and phases himself through, over, and then into Robbie’s body and mind.

He’s never done this before; he’s read about it, he had looked over some theories when he’d begun research with Lup, but he’s never, ever had to do this. It feels absolutely disgusting.

Taking back his empty shell was one thing. There was nothing in it, no soul pushing against yours, no fighting to keep yourself in charge for a minute while trying not to kick the original host away from their body.

_Alright, Barry, focus. But also ew, ew, it’s actually really gross doing this with another soul in here, crowded, that’s the word, claustrophobic, no, no, focus, focus, think about the plan._

He makes Robbie’s body walk toward the gates and to an open field. He looks at the bracer—there’s no way to take it off of him, like he’d been hoping, so he’s stuck in this body until he gets his answers.

It takes him a minute to figure out the controls to the orb, but soon he’s being taken back to specific coordinates.

He’s memorized the latitude and longitude to a little song by the time the orb heads…into the moon?

What the literal, actual fuck?

And then emerges into a docking bay, a big dome-like room surrounded by other orbs and the colors blue and white and okay, yeah, he’d thought maybe she was on a station or something, but what the hell kind of shit has Lucretia been up to? This place is…is a lot bigger than he’d thought.

He’s trying to come up with a convincing lie so he can get directions to “The Director,” when one falls into his—well, Robbie’s—lap in the form of a young man with wild hair, a scruffy chin, and goggles on his head, wearing a blue vest with an insignia that matches the one on both of their bracers.

“Robbie,” the kid says, handing over a flask. “Nice to have you back. Shopping go well?”

He stares at the flask for a minute, unsure, but takes a sip. It’s brandy, and it’s unexpected. Barry tries not to cough. “Sure did.”

The guy nods and takes his flask back, handing him over a stack of papers. “Can you do me a favor? I’m keeping an eye on, like, everything down in Goldcliff, but I wanted to get the launch info to the Director before Magnus and gang come back.”

At this, Barry perks up. Magnus and the rest were sent off to Goldcliff? What the hell was in Goldcliff?

He takes the paper as it’s handed to him, and realizes he has no clue where to take it. Taking a shot in the dark, he bluffs. “Uh, dude?” he says, and he slurs it. “Can you point me in the. The right direction, I’m more than a little fucked up right now.”

The man sighs and rolls his eyes. “Aren’t you one of those, ‘don’t sample your own supply’ kind of alchemist, Robbie?”

Oh thank gods, he is far too fucking lucky. “Couldn’t help it, friend,” Barry slurs. “Is it a right directly out of the…the…”

“The hangar?” the man suggests. Barry nods, and the man shakes his head. “No, head across the Quad and for the big dome, man.”

“Left or the right?” he tries. He’s not sure what the rest of the place looks like, but “big dome” seems too vague, and he’s not about to wander around as Robbie for more than half an hour at this point.

The man sighs again, louder and more annoyed. “The hell did you drink, man? Was it that stuff you gave to Magnus before the Rockport mission?”

He simply nods. He has no idea what that means, but sure, yes, he’s very, very fucked up, now tell him where the damned dome is.

“Across the quad, the biggest dome on the base, above that one restricted chamber. In there is the Director’s throne room. She should be in there right about now, if she’s not off doing something. Just go in, knock on the door, and slip the papers under the crack, okay?”

Barry nods again. Bingo. “Sure thing, buddy,” he tells him, and feigns stumbling until he can make it through the exit.

Robbie doesn’t seem particularly skillful in the art of stealth, and neither is Barry, but he manages to get across the quad unnoticed, taking stock of everything as he goes. Might as well do a little reconnaissance while he's here. 

As the engineer or whoever he was had said, the office looks like a throne room. It is arching and grand with banners displaying the same four triangles, stacked and touching. Toward the back of the room is a dais where the Director probably sat and did…

Well, whatever she did.

The floor is a deep blue carpet, complementing the icy colors around the room, and there are tables and books stacked neatly around. She spends a lot of time here, it seems.

There is a desk in front of a comfortable looking chair. It looks heavy and old, and there are more papers here than books. He notices, though, that there are two inkwells on either side, and two quills set neatly beside them. It’s painful to look at, to see how she is still the same Lucretia even after ten years, despite everything.

Barry looks around frantically. If there is a secret here, she’s hidden it well.

He stares at the wall behind the desk and…freezes.

It is a painting of Lucretia, but she is changed. Her features are serious and dulled, and there is no smile. There are frown lines pulling at her mouth, and wrinkles under her eyes. Her hair is no longer thick and curled and dark, pulled back and away from her face, but buzzed short and whitened with age.

She’s aged about twenty, thirty years in this picture, or maybe more.

He has no idea if it’s real or not, hasn’t seen her in over nine years, but he can’t believe that it’s accurate.

This is what must be enchanted, or hiding something. So he casts detect magic, because, muted as it is in this body, he still has his powers, and he finds what he looking for behind…behind a much more familiar picture. It’s hidden with magic, and maybe because he’s dead he see’s the painting for what it is, or maybe his spell strips the Disguise spell she’s possibly been using to hide it.

Either way, he doesn’t spend too long looking at it.

The hallway behind the picture is long and dimly lit, it takes too long to figure out the puzzle to open the door, and the alarm in the hallway seems to be going off from where he’d messed up with the glowing orbs, but Barry does it semi-successfully, and releases his hold on Robbie’s body as he makes his way to the chamber beyond.

There are a lot of things in this room that Barry recognizes—familiar deep blue journals, with worn pages, yellowing pictures, peeling paintings—and some maps with area’s circled and crossed out. The desk in the middle of the room looks like it’s used to set up a scrying circle, and Barry shudders. Lucretia was looking for him after all.

But none of this really captures him the way the small tank in the room does. In it, glowing and twisting and changing and pulsing with galaxies is a smaller Voidfish. This one, unlike Fisher had in the past, does not sing at him when he enters. It merely floats closer to the glass, curious.

Barry doesn’t know what to do.

Does he take it? Can he take it? He’s so shocked to have been right, and so angry. So hurt. How had this happened? How could she _do this?_

And then he hears footsteps from far off, and he knows exactly what to do. He casts Blink, and holds the spell until the security officers and Lucretia (who looks just like the painting’s magicked disguise, gods, what _happened?_ ) drag a very groggy Robbie out of the hallway.

He’s still holding the spell when Lucretia stops at the door, and turns to face the room. Her eyes—god, they’ve dimmed, and somehow through his anger and pain he finds that he’s worried about that—scan the area, and she sighs. She marches over to the back of the room and extracts a strange looking symbol that makes Barry nauseous.

It’s a holy symbol that encapsulates all the gods, something that you give to people with no chosen deity. It spins and glows under her careful magic, and Barry is going to lose the spell he’s been holding in place any minute now.

Damn her.

He wants to drop Blink anyway and curse her for this.

She touches the symbol, and bites her lips together, and she still looks so young, even when the eerie light from the Voidfish and glowing the symbol casts her face in a light that only serves to accentuate her age.

“Dammit,” she says to herself. “No. I can do this. I have to do this." She pauses. "I’m so, so sorry.”

And then she leaves, and Barry drops the spell and has to use the wall to support himself as he leaves, lest he end up like the collapsed Robbie.

He makes it back to the hangar to find it quiet. He sneaks into the launch booth, sets one of the sphears coordinates to a previous launch site (from a few hours ago), and sends himself to Goldcliff.

This changes things.

Now that he knows there is a second Voidfish, he knows for sure that there is no chance the boys will remember him, lich form or no. This doesn’t change the fact that he’ll still need their help. He already knows he can’t do this on his own, but with this new obstacle in his way, all he can do is hope Lucretia is keeping all of the Grand Relics she finds secure. With her and a whole base of operations on the look out for the Grand Relics (and, maybe, the red roped people who made them), he has no chance of getting to them before she can.

This isn’t an arms race anymore; after that little field trip, he knows she’s won. All he can do now is somehow communicate to his family that he’s there to help. That they’re in danger.

He freezes at that. He’ll have to make them remember before the Hunger descends upon this plane, somehow. He can’t tell them who he is, they might not remember knowing him before the Moonbase, and they won’t remember him from before Gundren. He’s not sure how much they can understand, but he doubts they’ll know what it means if he confronts them and says, “The Hunger is coming.”

He’s got to try something else. If he can’t attack the problem from the front, he has to try a different angle. The warnings can’t be direct, and he’s going to have to cryptic. He’s not a good liar, but they can’t know who he is; he faces the risk of their brains reducing him to static if they start to remember too much. He know that when they’d all been oblivious of each other there had been no problem, but even so, he doesn’t know if now is the time to reveal everything. Being a hooded figure that’s basically a soul with skeleton hands is as good a disguise at it comes, but he’s going to have to do something about his voice. If he’s too familiar, they might catch on.

He needs them to find the relics, he needs to warn them. He does not need to make them curious.

Lucretia will vilify him for this, he just knows it. Good.

They will not trust him if he does this. Fine. Not the original plan, but fine.

But he has to watch the relics, has to watch his friends, warn them.

This definitely changes things, but he’s going to have to roll with it.

He lands roughly, and far away from the city itself, but he’s got a shaky, tentative plan.

* * *

 

_They’re on the ground, fighting the Hunger’s minions, he and Magnus. It’s not like they haven’t done it before; occasionally, you get a little too attached to the people of the world, to the culture, to having a home even if it was only for a year._

_You want to fight for them, to give them some kind of a chance. Even if it’s pointless._

_They’ve made a sort of sick game out of it; if you’re planet-side with another member when Starblaster takes off, you’ve engaged in the competition._

_It’s just a game they play to stave of the fear gnawing at their gut._

_Whoever takes out more of the Hunger’s minions by the time the bonds bring them back to the ship is the winner._

_And Magnus is kicking his ass._

_“Thirty four!” he cheers, sending what could have been a large wolf once thudding to the ground._

_“Fifteen!” Barry calls back, sending a spell hurling at a robotic looking figure, and trying not to think about that world, just this one, just this moment. He feels guilty anyway. He’ll feel worse later._

_“Man, Lup is **so** much better at this than you!” Magnus whines, taking out a humanoid figure going in for the kill with what looks to be a halberd. Magnus blocks it with his shield and throws the creature off of him. Barry blasts it to pieces before it can head for his brother again. _

_“Sixteen! And shut up! We can’t all be evocation wizards and human tanks. Some of us like the cushy life of theory and hiding behind wands.”_

_Magnus laughs, bashing a hulking, dripping, shadow with the front of his shield before kicking it away. Barry watches out of the corner of his vision as Magnus cleaves its skull in two, the streaks of color flashing still as it slumps forward, dead._

_“Thirty five. And you could stand a little more combat practice, Barry,” Magnus says. Barry kicks at and animal that’s rushed to take his leg off, and uses mage hand to break its neck._

_Seventeen. He doesn’t say it out loud, but he knows they both think it. “I’m surviving,” he grunts. Magnus is rushing forward to tackle a bear-like thing that’s running toward the town they’re out side of, and doesn’t respond, and for a minute Barry thinks they’ll have a minute to breathe._

_They don’t and are backed up against a wall in moments, one of the half-mile tendrils landing a hundred feet away from them and armies pouring out of it like spray from a waterfall, violent and chaotic._

_A tendril from a dark mass comes at them and run Barry through, and Mangus gasps and turns to him, swiping at the tendril with is axe._

_“It’s fine,” Barry says automatically. He’ll be back after Reset, it’ll take about five minutes._

_Magnus looks weepy anyway. “Shit,” he whispers. “Shit, shit, Barry, I don’t like this. The game isn’t fun anymore, we have to get you somewhere safe. I don’t think we can but…”_

_Barry offers him a sad smile, his hands pressing weakly at his wound. “Welp. We’ll get ’em next time.” It’s all he really has to say about it. “See you in five.”_

_When he wakes up again (clutching the railing, white knuckled as he had been fifty three years ago, watching out the window for a homeworld he’ll never see again), Magnus hugs him so tight something in his back pops. He’s sporting the black eye from the night before, years and years ago, and he’s saying something to Barry that he doesn’t catch at first._

_When he does, he snorts and shoves the kid good-naturedly._

_“I hope this next world has gyms,” Magnus says. “This is the weakest hug I’ve ever gotten.”_

* * *

 There are a few things that bother him about his confrontation in Goldcliff.

One. Having to explain everything so cryptically. He can’t stand it, their untrusting eyes, the look on their faces. He wants to just tell them, “The Hunger is here, tell Lucreatia we need to work together.” He wants to tell them, “I’m your friend. Please believe me.” He wants them to remember. He wants them to believe whatever happens after this. He can’t _stand_ this.

Two. Walking in on what looks to be an attempted murder to get the Gaia Sash. The thought that they’d been so close, that he might have walking in on three corpses instead of just one. The thought scared him. They have no reset button this time around, and he’s struck in those first moments with how dangerous the job they’ve taken really is. How close to death they really are.

Three. Magnus lunging forward to punch him, and taking a swing at him with this axe—it just cements how far away he feels from all of this, a removed kind of sadness.

He shows them the faces of people lost to the thrall. He names them. He warns them in the best way he can, calling The Hunger something as if it was only directed toward the relics, the hunger of mankind and not the world, not the entity.

He tells them this is their first lesson, and uses the rest of his magic to make an exit that will startle them.

Whatever happens now with the boys and Lucretia will be the result of whatever they tell her about the encounter.

He’s picking his way across the town, invisible now to everyone around him, too tired to hold himself together more than the bare minimum, and presses his face into the palm of his hand.

Four. The fuck was that voice?

* * *

  _Merle dies at the beginning of the cycle for the next seventeen years. From Tesseralia to Legato, he sends himself into Parle and they all take turns watching over his body until he is killed by the Hunger—by a man Merle has referred to only as “Jon.”_

_Barry doesn’t know John, but despite his friend’s positive outlook, he doesn’t like him. The Hunger and John are leaving the rest of them one person short._

_Just because they’ve gotten used to losses, and just because he needs the information, doesn’t mean Merle’s repeated deaths become old hat. They are hard to witness, and the years that follow are lonely without the dwarf’s wisdom and silly jokes._

_None of them like this, but it’s the only way to talk to the enemy. They have to gather any information they can. And Merle does this dangerous task again and again with a smile._

_It’s the seventeenth year, three days into the new cycle (he hates calling them that), and he’s sitting with Merle as he prepares to enter Parle. “I know the answer, because it’s obvious every year, sometimes I feel like this is getting us nowhere. After seventeen years, are we really learning anything?”_

_Merle raises a bushy eyebrow. “’Course you do. I tell you everything I know, don’t I?”_

_Barry shakes his head. “Not like that. I mean…the Hunger keeps killing you, over and over, and that’s just—“_

_“Well, John does. The Hunger doesn’t really speak like we do; it doesn’t really do anything. It’s just kinda there. He’s the Hunger, but the Hunger, so far, isn’t him, as far as I understand it.”_

_Barry sighs. “I know. It just sucks watching you die. Even Taako hates it.”_

_Merle laughs at this, full-bodied and waves him off. “If you’re tryin’ to convince me to quit it, it’s not happening. You’re the one who told me to keep tryin’. Besides. We’re close to something. I can feel it.”_

_“Or maybe that’s your body’s flight or fight instinct kicking in a billion years too late.”_

_“Hey now,” Merle says, situating himself to sit on his bed. “I’m only a little over two hundred and thirty.”_

_“Not counting the year’s we’ve been chasing the Light of Creation?” Barry teases._

_“’Course. Might be about forty-six years older, but when you add those years is, I look good for my age, don’t I?” He winks and settles into the meditative pose. Barry laughs._

_“Try to play it safe, okay?” he asks. “Don’t irritate it, don’t do anything stupid to make it come down harder on us than it already has.”_

_“You people always say the same damn thing,” Merle mutters. “Being myself might get me killed, but it’s getting us somewhere, i’nt?”_

_“Just trying to give you some friendly advice.”_

_But Merle is under the influence of Parle by the time he finishes the sentence. And just like always, Merle’s body turns to smoke when he dies a few hours later, twisting like the tendrils that come off of incense sticks, the tang of magic filling his nostrils as Barry says goodbye to his friend for the seventeenth time._

_When he returns for the last time from Parley, he’s shaking his head as they crowd him, crossing his arms, and looking downtrodden._

_“What happened?” Davenport asks this, looking more concerned than he had every other time Merle returned from Parle. “Did you not get anything?”_

_Merle shakes his head. “More like…I got too much. John…the Hunger…” He sighs. “Can someone get me a chair? This is going to take some time.”_

_And it does. The short version is this: the Hunger and John, no matter how separate they are, cannot be swayed into Merle’s way of thinking. John is righteous in his nihilistic worldview, and Merle is stubborn in his optimistic one. John won’t budge because the Hunger won’t. Because the Hunger is Dissatisfaction and not, well, Hunger. Because they believe that they are the end, that their the only meaning everything has, because there’s no point in anything that is or was. The Hunger is massive and all consuming, and impossible to fight. Fighting for life—theirs, others, it doesn’t matter—is pointless to John, because he seems to think that submission is the be-all end-all when all of existence is pointless._

_Merle finishes his recounting with a sigh. “I don’t think I’ve made any headway, but I also don’t think he’ll talk to me again.”_

_“So…what, we waited for years to figure out Vore Boy isn’t going to budge in his ideology? I could have told you that,” Lup complains, crossing her arms._

_“It’s not that,” Lucretia says slowly. And as soon as she says it, Lup’s face changes, because, gods, she gets it too._

_They all do, and it’s a silent moment of understanding._

_There’s really no fighting something that believes it’s inevitable. At least, not in a way they were hoping_

_Melre never goes to Parle again after that, and they move on, fight harder each year to prove, somehow, that no effort put forth was fruitless._

* * *

 

His head is in his hands. He’s not crying. He’s not screaming. He’s not moving.

He’s devastated. Shocked. Torn apart.

Every Candlenights since he’d fallen from the ship has been lonely. But none have been so horrible as this.

It had been going so well. He’s been able to track and find most relic locations in the recent months since Goldcliff. He’s loosely mapped the wearabouts of the Animus Bell, and he’s pretty sure the giant opaque bubble in the middle of the desert is the damn Temporal Chalice. Lucretia has the Bulwark Staff—he’d seen as he fled the Moonbase all those months back, leaning against her desk as she spoke to a man in security about the punishment for poor Robbie.

The Gaia Sash, The Oculus, and Phoenix Fire Gauntlet are all in her possession too, thanks to the boys.

The only one he’s not so sure on is The Philosophers Stone. Taako’s Relic wasn’t super easy to hide once it was in use, but it is hard to track when it’s not. The thrall from the stone had been powerful like all the other thralls, but besides the incidents before they’d all been made to forget, there has been zero activity regarding it.

He’d been taking a break from his maps and calculations for his developing body that Candlenights, from throwing himself into his work to forget the old celebrations the crew would have back in the day. He never let himself focus on Candlenights these days.

He’d been taking a breather that night when he noticed the moon—the second, shouldn’t-be-and-wasn’t moon—move with astonishing speed…and it moves south.

“The fuck?” he whispers. They’ve been pretty good about their “rising” every night. They rise in the east, set in the west; the only thing they don’t do is cycle, but he’s not sure that stands out much to the people watching the sky.

They’ve never, not that he’s seen, moved it in any other way. So speeding south? Pretty damn interesting.

He doesn’t spend a long time checking any of his spells keeping his cave hidden, and takes off after the base. Whatever they’ve found, whatever made them move, it has to be because of a Relic acting up.

He follows them, teleporting when he can and floating when it would be a waste of energy. It’s pretty out of the way, but the problem can be seen immediately when they get there, hanging many miles above the Stillwater Sea. A large building, covered in pink crystal, is descending slowly toward the world.

Well, there’s The Philosopher’s Stone. Taako had always been pretty dramatic, and even his Relic had flare, but this problem was over the top, even for Barry.

It’s going to destroy the world if it touches this lake, he remembers thinking. There wasn’t much he could do, but he wanted to be on board. Just in case.

It was worse inside than he’d thought it’d be, that’s for sure. He’s entered through a different part than the boys had, following far behind a different group of people he doesn’t recognize. (He recognizes the orc woman, the lady who was with Magnus, Taako, and Merle in those moments before Gundren killed him and destroyed Phandalin.) But everything is pink tourmaline—the floors, the walls, the ceiling, everything.

And there are ghosts here. Not liches, nobody like him, but spirits that are wandering, or possessing—robots?

Who in the hell runs this place? Scientifically, this is the neatest place he’s seen in these nine years, hands down. This lab reeks of well-researched necromancy, and he wishes he had time to take a few closer looks. But from a necromantic point of view, it’s a mess, and the owner should be ashamed of it—who let’s loose spirits run amok in a place like this? There are so many hazards lying around, so many dangers to the scientist and summoned spirits.

He finds out it’s a snively little weasel with too much time on his hands and a big brain, and listens to him talk about the planes until he can’t stand to hear any more.

The guy is on the right track, but he isn’t here for that.

Stopping the flow of time isn’t a spell he knows, but with being a lich you gain a boost to your magical ability, and so the illusion that time is slowing and stopping around his friends is easier to cast than it should be.

Magnus had done his rush-in thing, tried to hit him, failed at it since Barry wasn’t corporeal, and watches Magic Missile fizzle out from Taako’s hand, finding it was useless.

And then Magnus stands inside his shape, and mocks being a Red Robe, and it’s all he can do not to blurt out something stupid, something that would only be static to their ears.

He’s able to explain the Hunger this time, and they understand him as he shows them exactly how it happens with the little not-spheres that he’s knocked out of the box.

Black opal, shifting and changing in color, consuming all in its path to join its multitude, and he can still hear the screams, still feel the fear as he shows them exactly what the Hunger has done in the past, what it will do in the future. They recoil as the vision leaves.

He tells them this is life’s last chance. That is the truth.

Magnus asks him who he is, and he tells him he can’t answer that yet. This is also true, even though his wants so badly for it to not be.

He’s about to tell them they they’re the only people who can do this, who can figure this out and—

That’s when he’d seen it. Purple fabric that shimmered like the ocean tied closed with a silk, tasseled rope. A curved wooden handle with a star shaped charm on the end, because she did everything with her brother in mind, and she wanted something of him to hold onto. (Taako’s glaive was much the same. All warm colors, encrusted in jewels, the end carved to look like a burst of flame, the blade looking much the same. Reflections of each other, of who they fight for.)

He remembers seeing something tucked under Taako’s arm the day the Rockport Express disappeared, concealed by his hat.

Lup’s umbrella was in her brother’s hands, as powerful as the day she’d finished it.

 _I got it off some dead thug in a red robe,_ he hears.

 _Long dead,_ he hears.

He can’t hold it together. He can’t he can’t he can’t—

He leaves, and does not go back into the laboratory. He watches from afar, numb, as the lab is saved, and the world is saved, and the Moonbase flies away.

They _did_ find her after all.

They found her.

_They found her._

Dead, Taako had said it was some dead person he’d found it on, and who else could that be but her?

He doesn’t want to go check Wave Echo Cave to find her remains; he doesn’t think he could handle seeing her robe pooled around her—what, skeleton? A corpse? A pile of ashes?

She’s dead, and her lich form is gone from what he can understand. Someone had killed her, and killed her again or something, and it was so long ago, maybe before they could really start looking for her, before they could help.

The love of his life is suddenly dead, now it’s confirmed, and Barry has no idea what to do with himself.

He doesn’t know how to press forward. He’s been clinging to her memory to keep himself from falling apart, and now that it’s all he has, he doesn’t know what to do.

He should have been faster.

He should have looked harder.

He should have gone with them to Wave Echo Cave.

There is a tearing sound behind him, and he knows, of course, who it is. He’s forgotten about the deal with the Reaper with everything happening so quickly, but he should have expected this. A building filled with three idiots who have died more than once, a billion ghosts, and a necromancer? Of course the Reaper would come here.

And his deal is up, but he’s not going to say anything if the Reaper doesn’t.

“…Hallwinter?” It comes out tired and shocked. And unaccented.

Despite the ache boring a hole through his very being, he says, “I knew it.”

Kravitz sits down next to him—well, slumps really. He looks like he’s just gotten the shit kicked out of him. He probably has. “Knew what?”

“The accent. Of course it was fake. I knew it.”

“Oh, shut up. I’m much too tired to put on airs right now.”

“Oh?” he asks dully.

“Mmh. I’ve had to make a billion decisions at once, shepherd lost souls into the plane without judgment, send more into the Stockade than I would have liked, while getting my ass handed to me twice in same hour.”

“Yikes.”

They’re quiet again, and Barry wishes the Reaper would leave. He wants to mourn alone before he moves on. (Not from Lup, but from accepting her death. He will _never_ forget, never move on and abandon one hundred years of memories forged in a love that redeems and defines his every move, his very being.)

“Everything all right?” the Reaper asks.

“No,” Barry sighs. Might as well be honest.

Kravitz’s face starts scrunch up in worry, and then he quickly erases it with understanding. “I’m not here to reap you. This is just pure coincidence.”

“Oh really.”

“We had a deal.”

“I also said that you weren’t supposed to bother me until I sought you out, or until my ten years were up.”

“Ah. Well…I mean, if we’re just shooting the shit it doesn’t count, I wouldn’t think.”

Barry doesn’t move to answer him. He just sinks further into this, lets himself feel the loss of her.

“I..forgive me here, but you…did you…lose someone? In the laboratory, I mean.” Kravitz tries. He sounds pretty awkward, but the sudden effort put toward trying to console a litch is comforting.

He doesn’t move, regardless. He doesn’t know if he can.

He lets himself miss her like she deserves to be missed. A wholehearted aching, a yearning that stretches him thin like taffy and leaves him empty.

“The…This…” the being next to him clears his throat. “I…I’m sorry if this is pushing it, but the signs of loss are, uhm. I know them well, and. Er, they’re pretty clear here. You…well, you have my condolences.”

“Please shut up.” It comes out pleading instead of angry.

But Kravitz, he does, he stops talking. He’s about a foot away from Barry, lying down by the Stillwater Sea, watching the moons in the sky like they’ve been there the whole time.

They’re quiet for a while until Barry moves to get up. “Thanks for the company.” It’s all he can manage right now. It’s soft and flickering like a candle.

The Reaper stands too and opens a rip in reality to Phandalin, the black glass reflecting the cold winter moonlight like two shimmering puddles. “So you don’t have to walk back. I don’t know where your hide out is, but this is the last place you’re mortal form perished, and I figure that’s good enough.”

Barry sighs. “Thanks.”

“You really look like shit,” Kravitz comments.

“So do you.”

They both share a quiet laugh and it’s an empty sound. Formalities in heavy atmospheres ring hollow, he supposes.

He steps through the rift and says nothing else, making his way across the obsidian field.

He’ll mourn, and he’ll continue. That’s what he’d done in the past when Lup had died before reset.

(There is no reset this time, and he tries desperately not to cling to this reminder. He fails, but must continue anyway.)

He has to stop the Hunger from making it to this world, from ending it. Just like all the years he’s lived with his family (by her side), he will prove his efforts not to be fruitless. If she’s died (and she has), it will have not been in vain.

Barry touches the letter he keeps in his robe.

_Back Soon._

He makes his way to his cave, and mourns and plans and watches the moons.


	3. Chapter 3

_Lup’s head is on his chest, her hair loose and flowing around her like a halo, body pressed against his side. It’s been months since they’ve started researching the processes of becoming a litch, and they haven’t told anyone what their doing._

_“Barry,” she says, and it’s soft like the warm light around them. “If we do this, do you know what happens once the process starts?”_

_He turns to look at her, shifts so that he’s facing her fully, hand resting on her hip under the blankets. “I haven’t gotten that far into my own reading yet,” he says, and yawns. “You do know, though, don’t you?” It’s not really a question; he can see it written on her face._

_She nods, and presses herself closer to him, wrapping her arms around his torso, close enough that without the protection clothes offer them, he can feel her heartbeat against his own._

_“First off,” she whispers into his collarbone, “it will kill us. It has to for the process to start, and then it…sort of…anchors the soul? We’ll have a few minutes of lucidity before the arcana tries to take over the mind. I haven’t done the sciency part of that yet.”_

_“Meaning you haven’t yet given it to me because it’s necromantic jargon, or because you’re afraid to start?”_

_Her heart speeds up, and he presses his lips to he temple, letting his words ghost over her ears, watching them droop in uncertainty. “We don’t have to do this. We just came across the idea, Lup. We don’t have to do this, not if you’re scared. We can back out any time”_

_“I’m not scared for me,” she says fiercely. “That’s not the point.”_

_“Alright.”_

_“The point is…litchification has had mixed success in the past. It has a reputation for a reason.”_

_He nods. “The power corrupts. Sometimes litches have to be put down when they’re first made. For some, it happens slower, and they go mad. Sometimes they don't. You gave me the text that said that.” He pulls away just a bit to look her in the eyes. She stares back at him, serious. Her eyes are glowing in the fuzzy low-light of Barry’s room. “You’re worried that once this happens, we won’t have enough to anchor ourselves to our beings.”_

_“No,” she says. “I’ve thought about that. The papers I’ve been reading, the journals? Usually people become litches to search for a better way to be immortal. But mostly it’s connected to a strong emotion. Hurt, or sadness, or suffering, things like that. We…we’re not looking for immortality, we basically have it. And neither of us plan of living miserable un-lives, right?”_

_“Right.”_

_“So the question became ‘If not a negative emotion, then what?' We’re going to need a positive one. I was thinking about it the other day, about what makes us different some every other litch to have existed in the world. What makes you and I any different from the people on this dumb planet?”_

_“We’re humanoid, for starters,” he chuckles, and tries to stifle it when she gives him a droll stare. “Okay, fine. We have lived, and we will live, longer. Right?”_

_“Close,” she tells him. “What keeps us from dying permanently?”_

_“The…bond machine, right…?” He trails off, eyes widening. “Wait.”_

_“Whatever that thing does to keep us coming back to ourselves, we need to do. Not just create a good feeling in place of a bad one, but create bonds that just…won’t break.”_

_“But that’s…it’s based on friendship, on relationships,” he says, dumbly._

_“I haven’t thought it through yet,” she admits. “But we need an anchor strong enough to keep us coming back. It has to have something to do with everyone, and it has to be strong enough that it makes us more human than creature.”_

_“Creating more memories with the people we love the most?”_

_“Pretty much.”_

_“I’m not following,” he admits after a beat. “We have a lot of memories, Lup. The beach, the First Church of Fungston, Legato. Would one of those work?”_

_Lup huffs a laugh and shuts her eyes, leaning back. “Too far away. We’ll need something recent, something a few days old, not decades, when we do this.”_

_He nods slowly, but doesn’t move to pull her back in. She’s still thinking, still smiling bitterly._

_He’s a bit slow on the uptake, hazy from sleep and stress and sex, but he sees it now in the way she holds her eyes closed, in the way she breathes in slowly through her nose and out through her mouth._

_“Taako,” he whispers, flopping onto his back. “You’re worried about Taako.”_

_She sighs. It breaks his heart. “I’m worried that my theory will be wrong. I’m worried that my brother will watch me lose myself because I did something insanely dangerous. We’ve never been on our own, Barry. He’s my brother; we’ve only had each other to rely on our whole lives. To take that away from him for a the slight **chance** that this could be useful…”_

_He watches her bring her hands to run through her bangs, watches her clench her jaw so tightly he doesn’t know how it’s not creaking from the stress. “I’m worried that I won’t lose myself, but that I’ll lose you. I’m worried I’ll lose Taako, and you and myself. I keep going around and around in my head; this is selfish to do, this is selfish not to do, if you do it you could ruin everything, if you don’t everything will be ruined anyway._

_“I’m not scared,” she interrupts herself suddenly, turning on him. Her eyes are fire and fear, and Barry sits up a bit. “I’m not scared for me. If it mean’s dying a million times until we stop the Hunger, until we have a home, I’ll fucking do it.”_

_“I know.”_

_“But everything else…” she trails off and shakes her head. “I want this to be over,” she finally groans, folding herself forward to press her forehead against his shoulder. “I just want to fight the Hunger, to stop it.”_

_“I know.” His hand hovers over her. “Is it alright if I hold you?”_

_She nods. “Please. Gods, please, Barry, this…”_

_He holds her to him, brings her in until her breathing slows with his. She’s squeezing the life out of him, but he doesn’t care. “Can I tell you something?” he whispers to the crown of her head before kissing it._

_“Yeah.”_

_“I’ve had three nightmares about this since we first talked it over.”_

_She looks up at him, frantically. “Babe—“_

_“It’s alright,” Barry says, and he means it. “I’m so scared for you. I’m scared for me. I’m scared that we’ll fuck it up. That I’ll fuck it up and I won’t come back the next cycle, or that I’ll lose it as soon as the lucidity is gone. I’m scared that I’ll…what if I end up killing you? There are so many things that can go wrong if you aren’t careful. Becoming a litch is something skilled necromancers have trouble with; anything can go sideways, anyone can get hurt.”_

_Lup’s eyes are wide and nervous. “Barry, I trust you,” she whispers, holding his face in her hands. “I trust you to get this right, to bring me back if it doesn’t work.”_

_He does the same to her. “And I trust you,” he tells her, just as stern as she is. “Which is how I know this **will** work.” He traces her cheekbones with his thumbs, runs his fingers over the back of her ears, making her shiver. “I love you. And if you’re hesitant about this, Lup, I’m not doing it. I won’t do that to you. There’s no reason to put ourselves at risk for this, not if we aren’t fully convinced that it will work, that we **want** this.”_

_She nods slowly. “I know.”_

_“It doesn’t have to be now,” he tells her, kissing her forehead._

_“I know,” she answers, moving to kiss his lips. “We’re not ready for it, not yet. We’ll figure it out.”_

_“Yeah,” he whispers, and kisses her again. “You’re too smart to let me do something stupid. I trust you.”_

_She laughs against his mouth, and holds his face in her hands still, and he brings her close so they can breathe in sync again._

_“I love you, Barry,” she whispers later, when the lights are out, both of them drifting. “I trust you, and I love you.”_

* * *

 

He can’t follow them inside the dome, he realizes. He’s tried phasing through it, blasting it, and has considered digging under it, but it seems pretty useless. He’s going to have to wait for them to figure it all out.

He hopes they can. The Temporal Chalice isn’t something to be messed with. When Magnus had created it, he told them all to be careful with it, despite that fact that the thrall couldn’t affect them anymore. _“It’s not about the thrall I don’t think, but that’s part of it. Cuppy here doesn’t just give you an extra life and then leaves after, like three wishes. The cup gives you control over time, always, so long as you have it. It…has the ability to change everything, guys. It…god, y’know what, just try not to touch it okay, guys? It’s not really all that safe.”_

He remembers the day all too well, remembers how scared Magnus looked when he revealed his creation, how the day he went to hide it, he all but sprinted off the ship. Control of time was dangerous, they all knew it.

And now, without any preparation, they were being sent to retrieve the cup.

Barry worries about what it means now versus what it had meant then. Back when the cup was created, everyone had wanted to more forward, and had no reason to look back. Looking back meant trauma. Looking back meant watching the world they were from die without being any closer to a solution.

Looking back now for those three…it means trouble.

It means no more regret for Merle.

It means saving forty people for Taako.

It means…god it means a whole entire other life for Magnus.

He’s worried this will do them in. What it will ask. Whatever the cup shows them, whatever it does to them, he won’t blame them for taking it. He’s scared anyway. He doesn’t want to lose anyone else, not when they’re this close.

It takes about forty-five minutes.

He’s sitting by the dome, invisible, humming something to himself when he feels it. The ground is moving, and far away to his left he can see the engineer guy from Lucretia’s base grab hold of his canon to keep from falling over. He looks to the dome, trying to see if it’s collapsing. But it’s in place, firmly so, and unchanged. The ground shifts underneath him, and Barry hops up and hovers, watching the dirt shift and change and then—

There is a sound like breaking glass, and then, twenty feet in front of him, a miners cart bursts out of the ground carrying the three stooges. Merle is shouting something, Taako seems to be yelling aimlessly, and Magnus is holding a giant, ornate clock hand that Barry has never seen before, and is laughing and then screaming something like, “Brace for impact!” as the cart lands hard in the desert sand, sending the three of them sprawling.

Magnus, forces himself to his feet, and grabs Taako, who’s helping Merle as best he can. They rush over to the man at the canon and drag him to the ground.

There is the sound of glass breaking behind the pop of a bubble, and Barry flinches, then is slack jawed and terrified as a purple fucking worm, humongous and horrifying, bursts forth from the dome, flying over them and screaming in rage.

“What the _fuck_ ,” Barry hisses, already preparing a spell. These things hate fire right? Or was it ice? Fuck, it’s not like he did his research on desert creatures before he came here! What the hell have they done?

He’s thrown from his thoughts as a shape passes by him. quickly heading for the trio. Two more follow it, tunneling under the sand, and he’s about to shout a warning, because, shit, the fucker brought friends, but the beast stops its noise as the three baby worms make their way forward.

“Fuck me,” Barry sighs. Gods, how the hell had they managed to mess with an entire nest of purple worms? What kind of stupidity was that?

It doesn’t really matter; that was a crazy and wonderful coincidence, and he’s pretty sure the relief they’re alive and back outweighs the shock of seeing that entire thing pan out.

Before he forgets, he freezes the canon guy from this distance; can’t have any interruptions or witnesses right now. He’s supposed to be a secret. He blinks over to the trio and catches the tail end of Magnus trying to slap some sense into—Avi? Is that what this guys name is? Mangus is repeating it after every slap, so it’s either that or a new thing he’s found to shout after an action.

He appears behind Avi and holds a finger to his lips before any of them can speak. Barry waves his other hand, and makes sure the stones of farspeech are silenced. He hadn’t thought about that at the lab, and had made his presence known to Lucretia by screaming pretty damn loud the last time he’d seen them.

They watch him carefully, and they all look…haunted.

Gods, no.

“Did you retrieve the cup?” he asks them carefully. He looks over each of them; they’re all _here_ , which means whatever they changed hasn’t changed their path too much. But still…

“Yes,” Magnus says curtly, curiously. He’s exchanging a look with Merle and Taako.

Barry nods. “What did you change?” He might not sound it using his distorted voice, but it comes out resigned. If it’s something fixable, or something small, he can probably roll with it—

“N…othing?” Taako says, voice lilting up to form an almost question.

Magnus nods in confirmation. “We didn’t do anything with it,” he admits, and he sounds unnerved but truthful.

It comes as a shock to Barry. He tries not to vault back in surprise. “You didn’t use the cup?” he asks, incredulous anyway.

A chorus of no’s is his answer, and gods is that reassuring.

“I’m really proud of you,” he tells them honestly, without thinking. He is proud of them, he feels it rise in his spectral chest and in the smile he knows they can’t see. He’s…relieved, really. “I thought there was a chance that this was the one that would end your adventure.”

Magnus blinks, and then furrows his bush eyebrows. “I—what? Wait, hold on, proud of us?” He shakes his head, and now he sounds confused, and then angry, and Barry feels an echo of hurt ripple through him. What’s the matter with being proud of them? It was a dangerous task that they’d over come. They’d over come the temptation of time, something momentous and heavy, something each of them could have used now. “You’re one of the red robes right? You’re a bad guy.”

It is in that moment Barry remembers the role he is playing. He’s spent months mourning and tracking and watching out for them. His spring has been keeping an eye on his family. He’s been so close to them, even though he hasn’t spoken a word to them since Candlenights. He’s forgotten who he’s meant to be now. “Who told you that?” he asks wearily, reluctantly. He can feel the energy from his hurt build inside him. He already knows who.

“Ev…erybody?” Merle hedges with a nervous laugh.

Taako looks at Merle and nods. “Yeah, everybody.”

Magnus goes a step futher, and drops a few names, listing them off his fingers. “The Bureau, and—what’s her face—the Director.”

Of course she would, he’s prepared for this. Lucretia is trying to hide him from them just like he’s hiding from her. He’s supposed to have already come to terms with it. He knows they won’t remember him, he knows they think he’s evil. He knows they’ve been fed lies to fend off the truth. But it’s never been so close to him before, he’s never had the chance to hear it from the horse’s mouth. Now he has, and he tries to press on anyway. “I need to know,” he says, in desperation, “do you trust me?”

The chorus of no’s this time is heartbreakingly final.

“Not just no,” snaps Merle, stepping forward in his anger, “but _hell_ no.”

Taako nods emphatically. “Youre fucking popping up in a red robe, speaking parstletounge, asking like, do we tr—no we don’t trust you!” he snaps, exasperated and disbelieving and fuck if that doesn’t hurt. “What kind of question is that?”

It hurts; despite everything, it hurts to hear.

They don’t trust him.

He can feel his form start to lose it right then. The bonds he’s formed over a hundred years of travel have snapped, just like that, and he almost feels it, almost feels a physical severance as he feels himself flicker in and out of existence. His powers flare, and a bolt of energy nearly hits Merle.

They don’t trust him.

He already knew this, but hearing the confirmation is a blow he wasn’t sure how to take.

They had to trust him. But they don’t, and it is not only a blow to him, this far in the game, but a horrible failure.

He holds on to his strongest bond, the one he’s refused to break, even in death. He remembers Lup, remembers the day he’d given her before Taako has been asked to give his. Her memory is enough, most times, but right now, he only feels guilt instead of stability. He falls to his knees. “Lup, they don’t trust me,” he whispers, and it’s calming, almost, to speak to her out loud. This is all so hopeless. It’s not over yet, and yet somehow he still knows he’s failed. “I can’t do it anymore…Lup, I’m sorry…”

He hopes wherever she is, she can hear him, she can forgive him for forgetting his role, for understanding too late that he’s lost her, for not finding her, for not realizing his family was already the lost the moment they’d stepped into that floating orb.

 _I trust you_ , he remembers her saying. For right now, that will have to be enough.

There is one more relic left. There is one more shot to get this to work, to make them trust him, even if they can’t remember. His plans are in shreds, and everything now is falling apart but he has to pretend to have this under control.

He has another shot. His bell is well hidden and in a dangerous place. They’ll need him. Barry won’t let this one go.

He pulls himself together with that thought, and after a few moments, he stands and faces them. “The next time we meet, I will need you to trust me completely and absolutely.” They won’t, he knows, and he’s unsure how to prove to them that he can be trusted. But he must. He will. “Otherwise all of this would have been for nothing. The Hunger is almost here, and when it arrives, this world will be lost.”

* * *

_“Truth or dare, Lulu?” Taako asks, shifting his body so that Lucretia, who was fading fast after a few glasses of wine, was lying more comfortably against him._

_“Dare.”_

_“I dare you to set fire to Capn’port’s mustache.”_

_Davenport launches up from his position next to Barry and swats the elf’s arm. “Don’t even think about it, Taako, dammit. Choose another dare.”_

_“Yeesh!” Taako grumbles. Davenport **glares** and Barry stifles his laugher in Lup’s hair, his arm around her shoulders. “Fine. Uh…uh…uh…kiss Barold.”_

_Lup scoffs. “That’s it?” she cackles. “Kiss my boyfriend? Koko, I’m disappointed in you! Where is that renegade spirit?”_

_“Up yours,” Taako laughs, kicking out as his sister. She curls up her legs and sticks out her tongue. “No thanks,” he teases. “I use toilet paper.”_

_“Fuck you,” Lup laughs, and tilts her head up to kiss Barry. He smiles into it, and feigns passing out, pressing the back of his free hand to his forehead._

_Lup nudges him playfully, and takes her turn to spin the bottle. It lands on Merle, and she asks, “Truth or dare, Merle?”_

_Merle shrugs. “Dare.”_

_“If it has anything to do with plants rapidly growing, the ship, or me, you can find a new Captain,” Davenport says as Lup opens her mouth._

_“Throw a pillow at Davenport and see if that chills him out,” Lup suggests, and Merle laughs loudly before complying._

_Their captain gets a face full of down pillow, but says nothing else about it, just leans over the pillow and grumbles and pretends he’s not grinning._

_It goes around like this, dumb questions and dares being proposed, laughs and shouts and cursed being hurled._

_At one point, Magnus is dared to bench press Merle, which goes about as well as one could expect._

_Davenport talks about his love for plants, which it, he makes a point of saying, nothing so big as their resident cleric’s love for flora, he’s just taken a liking to some of them._

_Lucretia sleepily admits that she speaks eight languages and is willing to teach any of the IPRE if they’re willing to learn._

_Taako and Barry are in a staring contest for a full two minutes before Taako gives in, claiming that wearing glasses makes him a cheater-cheater-pumpkin-eater, and that he refuses to call it anything but a draw. Lup thumps him with Davenports pillow._

_It goes on like that, family game night, until they’re all passed out on the couches in the living area, wrapped in blankets and buried in pillows._

_Days like this, he thinks as Lup snuggles close to him and Magnus snores lightly in his ear, make it all seem so normal._

_He likes it. Despite the suffering, the loss, the fear, and the homelessness, they’ve got a family in the end._

_He falls asleep listening to the low, ever present hum of the bond machine._

* * *

 

He saves Merles children and realizes it only after he’s redirected the runaway cart to spare the kids in its path. He hadn’t been aiming for anyone’s favor here—they’re young kids, and Barry isn’t about to let two lives end because they were strangers. He directs the cart swiftly, holding his arm out and twisting his magic so that the wheels veer so far right they might have broken.

The dwarf, he notices—or, well, he becomes aware of it now, in any case—is missing an arm, and has the wooden hand up like he was going to cast to protect his children before seeing him.

He’s not sure what to do when they lock eyes, but Merle looks bewildered and stumped all at once.

Barry lowers his hand, nods, and disappears before the other child with him—who looks weirdly familiar—can take notice.

It doesn’t matter, he tells himself. Acts of heroism will do nothing in the face of the story Lucretia has weaved. The goal right now is to set after the final relic when they do, and hope beyond hope for something other than mistrust.

* * *

 

_He tells her one day during a quiet cuddle that no matter the time, she—as in her entire being—will always be what keeps him together. Whether he’s a litch or human, she is his true north. He thanks her for that, for her presence._

_Lup turns him around so that he’s facing her and kisses him. It’s gentle and slow, and he loves her so much that there aren’t always words for it._

_“Sometimes I think,” she whispers, her breath ghosting across his cheek, “that you can I could make an entire world based on our bond alone.”_

_Barry smiles warmly. “You’re such a sap,” he teases, because there are so many ways to say I love you._

_Lup preens under his words, under their true meaning, and hums in agreement. “Might be a fun place to travel to.”_

_“Like a carnival.”_

_“All aboard the boat through the Tunnel of Love.” She makes a sound like a horn honking, and they fall together in a fit of feather light kisses and giggles._

* * *

 

Entering Wonderland isn’t been easy; it’s like pushing through mud or wet sand. He recognizes it as the feeling of phasing through a solid object—which he _can_ do, but prefers not to—and when he emerges, he’s in…darkness?

It’s dark, yes, but it’s…moving?

For a few minutes, Barry doesn’t move, just in case he’s walked into a trap. People litch proof things occasionally, he’s sure, and what ever this is might be one of those.

But it moves and curls around him, this extra darkness, and Barry doesn’t exactly know what it is, but it’s not a spell, and so he moves on, unseen by whoever run Wonderland.

He only knows what it is when he’s accidently phased through a wall in the middle of a fight. Two drow are fighting a terrifying looking treant.

Barry looks over his shoulder, and takes note that he’s some how been brought to this room just by moving forward.

He’s about to question whether or not this is the result of illusion magic when he hears a bloodcurdling scream and jumps, turning to watch the display.

The treant is lying dead now, but Barry can just make out the worst of the carnage it left behind.

One of the drow is missing a leg—well. “Missing” is the wrong word, they’ve definitely got it attached to them. But it…it’s horrifying, crushed like rotten fruit under someone’s boot, blood and viscera and bone showing, and the owner of the leg howling in absolute agony.

He turns his eyes to the ceiling—hopefully Taako, Magnus, and Merle haven’t gone through anything so gruesome here, not yet—when he sees it.

Clouds of black smog, curling toward the ceiling, like the tendrils of smoke from a great bonfire. But instead of a fire, it’s coming from the hysterical drow and their partner, who is cursing and trying to calm the other.

Invisible and undetected, Barry moves closer to try something dangerous. He siphons a tiny bit away from the growing cloud, and takes it in.

Dread curls in his stomach and energy ripples up his spine, and all at once Barry is phasing through the wall again, trying to keep calm.

A litch that isn’t calm is a litch that can easily be detected. Especially by other litches.

It’s not like he’s antisocial, or anything, but Barry has never actually met another litch besides Lup. There are a few reasons for this, one being that he was pretty busy with interplanar travels, and another being that he’s recently been pretty busy trying to gather up seven weapons of mass destruction and stop the end of the world (which is…it’s here. Or it’s at least on it's way. The grass grayed the day he followed his friends into the Felicity Wilds, started to discolor just a bit, enough to make Barry desperate enough to run into Wonderland unseen). There are also no support groups for litches advertised around Faerun, not a one, so meeting people is…hard.

He’s joking about it of course, but the truth is that the litches in charge are terrifying beings who have perfected the art of using strong emotion to sustain themselves.

It’s horrifying.

But it does get his mind moving.

Theory: this entire place—and if he had time he’d be properly impressed—is constructed and run on a conglomeration of the same type of emotion, or something close to that. What had that been back there, pain? Loss?

Suffering, he decides.

Theory, he thinks as he makes his way through the darkness: This is room is filled with smoke because it’s many rooms in one. If this area weren’t super small, he’d have phased through another wall by now, because there would be…well, another wall.

Theory, about to be tested: if he wants to find a room, he has to be able to harness the smoke and make it.

He does this, thinking about the shape of the other room and nothing else, takes a step forward. He’s created a sort of window, at least, but the energy it takes to maintain is enough to leave him dizzy. Barry looks in to see a human, a half-elf, and a smaller elf arguing about something in front of a wheel with strange symbols. The elf has a bandage over her eyes and looks like she’s trying to breath her way through a panic attack. He winces and looks away. Barry has seen enough to confirm that theory.

Another one then: he could probably manipulate a door to an exit if he can get into another room. This might be harder, might be more centered in transmuting the smoke into an actual, usable door rather than using it for travel and phasing through walls, but still.

He’s got a tentative plan, currently, which so far consists of finding the boys and finding a way out.

The “window” fades and he’s back in the dark room. Despite it all he’s grinning.

* * *

 

He finds them in the wheel room. Barry tries to speak to them in the only way he can. He seeks out Magnus, and tries as Merle spins that fucking wheel of horrors.

 _Silence._ Please, don’t let them know. _Confirm?_

Magnus, bless him, understands. He confirms.

_Secret. Confirm?_

He understands.

 _One._ The number. _Room. Magic. Room. Transformation._ Please, please, please, understand. Thieves-cant isn’t known for its fluidity, but please understand that he’s here to help, that he sort of knows what going on.

 _Wait for signal._ Don’t do anything stupid. _Confirm?_

A beat.

_Confirm._

* * *

He sticks with them, watches Merle forget (because they haven’t done enough of that already), and watches them more forward into a pitch black room.

Magnus’ hand jerks a bit, and he watches. _Room. Trap. Confirm?_

Of fucking course it is. _Confirm._

This room is made up of shadow and suffering, but it’s made to look like a small dome with two buttons in the middle of it, and screen wrapping around the walls.

The game is called Trust or Forsake, and Barry isn’t sure how he feels about a lot of any of it; Taako choosing to forsake someone without even thinking (though he’s known Taako for one hundred and twelve years, and knows the decision is true to him), The disembodied voices over head lying about how many people have made it out with their prize (and there is a brief flash of annoyance at this—their treating The Animus Bell like a door prize, at least show some respect), the literal talking head that peaks its way out of Taako’s bag, and the way Taako mentions that his condition is due to an air conditioner falling on him.

He’s been in this place for maybe an hour and a half trying to find a way to help, but he’s ready to tear this place to pieces.

For a moment, as they make their way forward to their newest torture, he feels fire in his veins, through his soul, and is reminded of Lup, her sacrifices, her power. If given the opportunity, he is most certainly going to light this place up for the both of them.

They step in to a board game, or some twisted nightmare version of it, and Barry barely has time to mouth, “What the hell?” before it changes to…

A fucking game show?

Their fucking with them now, by the looks of it, or trying to. Playing with them like a cat with its meal. It doesn’t sit right with him, and he feels…wrong, like things are about to head south.

“Live from the inescapable depths of Wonderland!” a voice announces, and Barry stews in his frustration. “It’s time for another round of Heart Attack! The heroic dating show.”

Inescapable, sure, unless you had enough power to make a door with a nice big “EXIT” sign above it. Or something. He’s not so sure how that plan is going go yet, especially when has has limited powers.

He’ll try though.

The elves name themselves, and show off for the crowd of...he can’t tell. They look like people, but under the stage lights, Barry can’t make out any features.

Taako makes a snide remark about the entertainment value “inescapable” has on a dating show. Black smoke rises from his mouth (Barry winces a little; it’s harder to watch when it’s from someone you care about), and without thinking, Barry siphons some off to refuel. Again he feels the extra boost of electricity and power in his soul and at his fingertips.

Alright then, he thinks, strapping in for this stupid façade of a game show. He’s proven so far that these rooms are not traveled between but constructed around them. He’s also proven to be able to manipulate the smoke to do what he wants, just like Lydia and Edward.

And now he’s got a bit more to work with. If he gets power through this black smoke because of the raw emotion, then he’s suddenly equipped with a way to gain enough power to create a door.

Magnus makes his distaste for this game known again. “I hate this,” he insists, and smoke comes billowing out of him as he complains.

Barry takes partakes again, storing the energy. It’s negative, and it makes him feel highly caffeinated at this point, but for now it’s the only thing he’s got going. He has no plan B.

When the elves turn around he stops his intake immediately—he’s too far into playing this risky version of hide-and-seek, he can’t risk being found—and in turn notices Magnus. Magnus watches the spot where he is, as surreptitious as someone like Magnus can be.

And in that moment, he’s so glad that Magnus—despite rushing into things and his philosophy of “thinking is for other people”—is smart enough to experiment and understand what’s going on.

He presses the symbol for _Not the right time_ into his friend’s hand, and Magnus, reluctantly, confirms.

It’s kind of funny, watching them answer these questions, in a melancholy way. When he was in the IPRE, Magnus wasn’t necessarily looking for love, but adventure. He rushed in, protected, and was just…strong. He had lot of love to _give,_ sure, but be also had a reckless sense justice and no sense of self-preservation. But hearing him speak about dating now in this setting, it is different, and Barry recognizes it easily, though sympathizes differently. Barry had only been focused on whether or not Magnus had been lost in the burning of Ravens Roost; he’s never considered that Magnus had lost someone else.

Merle’s still fits what he remembers of the old dwarf during the IPRE days. Sarcastic without being bitter, and just about as deadpan as someone as jovial as him could be, that’s Merle. Barry winces a little at the mention of an ex-wife—he was never sure Merle was the settling down type, and he thought Lucretia thought so too—but the small, honest, and triumphant smile at the end is much the same as the ones he wore once he’d returned from the dead.

Taako’s is…well Taako’s. He’s honest too, but to a point that comes off almost self-centered to anyone who didn’t know him. There’s a cleverness to that honestly, that dedication to his fans as he speaks; Lup has explained it as “weeding out the weak ones.” People not willing to listen, or looking to fix something that isn’t broken, or looking to take more than they’re given. It was a survival tactic that had been employed for longer than the rest of the crew would have liked, but one that Barry hadn’t seen in a very long time. It’s the part where his friend says he’ll take anyone he can get that gives him pause, and Barry remembers that he has those instincts now for a different reason, had to teach them to himself all over again and alone.

And so it goes, listening to his friend’s responses to these inane questions, glaring, unseen, at Edward and Lydia as they read off cue cards and prance around the stage. Leeches, the both of them, and Barry feels powerful as he thinks it.

Lup would have blown these assholes to hell and back.

It starts to pop off when Taako casts Tasha’s Hideous Laughter. The being behind the curtain jerks and falls and actually loses its head.

Gods above but it was either a zombie or a damned tackling dummy behind there, and Barry flinches as it begins to move like it's laughing, but jerks itself unnaturally, twisting and doubling over and…fuck that is _creepy._

He’s justifiably horrified along with his companions when the second spell goes off, and he only knows it's happened because he’s watching Taako’s lips move, barely shaping the incantation.

Taako casts, and it feels almost like nothings changed. Maybe the room gets a little cooler, but it’s hard to tell when you’re a litch. Senses like touch are sometimes dulled when you’re not focusing hard on them. Maybe that’s what Taako’s counting one, or maybe he’s hoping for some kind of fluke here.

He casts True Sight.

 _You fucking genius_ , Barry thinks, _you genius, you idiot, you absolute genius._ That was a dangerous move and a smart one, and Barry thinks of Lup and how she always said he was smarter than he let on in those earlier years, how he’d prove that time and again.

Then he shouts, “You know what? Fuck all this.” He throws his hands up in a very Taako-like manner and turns his nose up. “I’m done playing.”

He takes the bait, because that’s what his friend, his stupidly smart pseudo-brother, that’s what he needs him to do. If one of them has to know where the smoke is going…

Magnus flinches as he faces the twin elves in front of him, the movement nearly imperceptible, and…

And then…

And then.

Magnus looks directly at him. Magnus look directly at him when he’s not supposed to be seen and startles him. It clicks in his head that True Sight was cast on Magnus, and Barry is both impressed and nervous.

Before Magnus can do anything else, Barry presses his finger to his non-existent lips.

_Silence._

And Magnus complies.

_Confirm._

This just got a lot easier. And a lot more difficult.

 

* * *

 

Things Barry sees in the time is takes for the moment to arrive:

-The stripping of Taako’s vitality. These litches should have been fine taking a chuck out of an elvish life span, but he’s painfully reminded that this is a game to them. It is a game to not make them give, but make them suffer, and he hates it.

-Merle is now missing an eye, and for some reason his magic won’t work. He knows at this point that the eye is because of the litches—taking a look at poor Cam sort of confirms that these litches will take anything as a sacrifice. But his powers? That stumps Barry, make him uneasy; Pan has never neglected to answer Merle, until now and Barry is…honestly scared. Pan isn’t there, and it’s horrifying, because if Pan isn’t there, something might be going horribly wrong. Whether it’s with the outside world or this awful place, he doesn’t know.

-Magnus forgets. He forgets a man named Governor Kalen, and though Barry is curious, he’s more upset that Magnus is made to forget someone who seems to be a source of pain in his life. Magnus looks upset too, until he doesn’t, and Barry sighs.

Lucretia, whatever she had thought about sending them into this, must be kicking herself now.

They press on.

* * *

 It’s now. The time is now now now _now_ —

A spider, drow, and then Gundren on fire.

_Work, damn it, work!_

Then two nasty meat monsters, and a sharply dressed elf.

The first thing he’s able to make is a dresser. _No._

Bookshelf. _No._

Fireplace. _Nope._

Lamp. _Shit._

_Fucking come on! Work with me! Give me a door! Focus!_

A huge fucking tank in the shape of a shark.

_Come on, come on._

Potted plant. _Damn it!_

Guillotine. _No!_

Marble column. _A door!_

Coat rack. _Stupid fucking smoke, fucking idiot, Barry, you’re an idiot, open, give me a door, open up and give me a **door**!_

Mangus catches the mannequins on fire.

Oven. _Fuck!_

Crates. _Gods damn it!_

Painted portrait. _This isn’t working._

Taako transforms his entire body in to the shape of a tyrannosaurus rex, and wrecks shop. He’s vaguely proud of him, but he has to focus.

_Work, please, a door. Not thing close to a door, not things that sound like door, not thing that go in an entryway. A door, give me a door, give me a fucking **door.**_

The purple worm from Refuge, which is on fire thanks to one Magnus Burnsides.

And rectangular crate. _Closer in shape…_

A window. _Please, please, come on!_

A door. Open and wooden, then cobblestone, then metal and grated, and then glass. But it’s a door, flickering and changing and open and it’s a _door_ and gods above it _worked!_

He waves Magnus over, though they must have all seen it anyway, and Merle, burnt to high heaven shouts a panicked, “Sauté! _Sauté!”_

And Mangus waves them over, nodding, shouting, “Time to sauté, boys!”

Magnus rushing through, then Merle and Cam barreling in thanks to Dupree slash Taako, then Taako, shrinking down and sliding through, barely grabbing his hat as it floats down from it’s previous height.

The purple worm rears up and Barry has to move, move, move—

They’re all through right before the work crashes down, and the door closes and into a bigger, darker room.

* * *

 The Animus Bell was created with the power that it has out of sheer scientific curiosity. Barry has only ever wanted to know the science behind necromancy, and maybe, _maybe_ one day try a few theories out or see them in practice. But he knew the moment he made it that it would be…a bit too extra.

Tearing the life force out of a body and replacing it with your own—it worked like possession did, with ghosts or litches and the like. And he thought that because it required the moving of two souls, no one would want to try it.

Until he hears his bell, and in this moment, he’s terrified and sick and so, so sorry.

He doesn’t see Magnus’ soul once it leaves, but he _can_ see Edward enter and speak for Magnus. And it’s hard to see, because at first, Barry doesn’t notice. He hears the bell, he gets scared, and he doesn’t notice a lot when he’s scared.

Until Magnus speaks to Wonderlands glory, and Barry feels like ice.

No.

No, Gods, no.

There isn’t a way for Barry to Blink and try and find him—and he’s not sure he could do that _anyway—_ not without risking more energy. And he can’t to that, can’t risk it, he’s weak enough from directing suffering to form a door. If they’re going to fight their way out, he can’t do anything accept wait to manipulate the litches magic by manipulating its source, something that doesn’t sound like it’s going to work, but at this point, he’s worn, exhausted, and so tired of thinking of anything besides getting them all out alive and destroying Wonderland.

But Magnus, he’s…gone.

And Taako gets a look in his eye, a look Barry remembers his friend usually got right before he did something dangerously over-the-top and smart as hell. It had gotten the IPRE out of several sticky situations, and had gotten them into countless more.

Taako collapses, eyes rolling into the back of his head, and for a moment Barry thinks he’s about to have some kind of seizure, and he feels like he’s choking.

But no, Merle seems to know what’s happening. He’s waiting, and watching, and then taking out his bible and quietly casting.

And then Taako comes back into his body with a start, looking triumphant and grateful, but afraid, Merle helping him to his feet and saying something that Barry can’t quite hear because he’s watching as one of the freaky mannequins makes their way toward the runway they’re standing on. Barry is feeling like he’s about to launch it through the planes of existence in his frustration once it pulls itself on to the stage, but it turns to the litches—one in Magnus’ old body and one dressed to impress—and says in a clear, angry voice, “I’ll be having my body back, you undead fuck.”

* * *

 

The fight happens quickly, so quickly Barry doesn’t feel like he’s doing much accept summoning and blocking and doing the bare minimum to keep his friend _alive._

The only things he remembers clearly is his brief confusion and then all-consuming horror toward the end.

Lup’s umbrella ate the litch Edward, and he figured sure, why not, it was supposed to do that. But then moves and twitches and it spits him _out_ , and his form collapses into ashes. He doesn’t understand this staff’s process there, but perhaps it’s just protective over Taako.

And then soon after, wonderland is destroyed. And in an act of vengeance, maybe, along with Wonderland, Magnus’ body turns to ash and is blown away in the wind of the Felicity Wilds.

It’s over.

They’ve retrieved the bell, and Wonderland is gone. In it’s place are people who are crying, screaming, laughing and hugging, looking up to the sky as smoke winds its way into the air, curling up and up into the dying wind.

Barry is relieved. He’s upset, and still wound up, but he is so glad to watch this place literally go up in smoke. Until he looks at the sky and it settles on him now that the Hunger is…gods it’s close.

The clouds don’t move, the wind is slower, and the grass has lost a little more color.

“Oh no,” he whispers.

He doesn’t have long. None of them do.

And then Magnus—who isn’t Magnus but is Magnus, and Barry wants to vomit, he lost his _body_ , gods—is coming at him with the wrath of every beast and vengeful spirit they’ve ever encountered in their one hundred years together in his steps, somehow managing to pour pure fury onto the face of a faceless mannequin. He’s clutching an arm in one hand, the arm that was torn off in the fight, and—

Shit, shit!

“Wait, wait, hold on—!”

“Answers,” Magnus growls, “now!” and brings down his wooden arm like a club to hit him.

It’s probably well-deserved. This past year and some months has been a ride for all of them, and he hasn’t exactly been helping (of course, he knows logically he couldn’t have helped them, but he’s been trying, they just didn’t remember him, or the IPRE, or each other, and he couldn’t explain a thing without it being blotted out by static), but for the gods sake, Magnus really? He’s semi-corporeal at the moment, that can actually hurt him!  
He makes to grab the arm before it hits him, and flinches when he does.

And then his friend goes slack. Stiff. Like a real mannequin and it’s so sudden that Barry almost lurches forward to shake him. For a moment he doesn’t remember that the dead…remember. He only knows that Magnus’ soul is in an item and that with the disappearance of Wonderland, it might leave at anytime, turning to black smoke and suffering before drifting off on the light summer breeze that’s quickly fading around them.

No. Don’t think about that now. Focus.

“Hey,” he says, letting the arm drop from his own hand. Magnus’ falls with it, both arms at his side, starting straight ahead. “Hey. Look, you good? We have a lot of walking to do.”

“To where?” This comes from Merle, who’s now lost not only his eye and his faith, but now his friend, and Barry feels sick. Behind him is Taako who looks…bad. There wasn’t anything he could do, his magic is low, but fuck does he look like shit.

Merle is standing in front of Magnus, who is still silent. He hasn’t been privy to Merle’s quiet wrath since the Starblaster, years before Farune. Taako stands next to him. It’s the closest to fierce protectiveness he’s ever seen in twelve years from him.

They still have no reason to trust him, but he finds himself taking an unnecessary breath before saying. “Can you just…follow me?”

“Where?” Merle asks again. “We aren’t gonna follow anyone anywhere until we get some answers.”

Barry groans. Stubborn old fool who he loves like a father, he’s trying to end this! “Not with a million people around, please? We won’t walk too long. I just want to lose the crowd before I…get into the details.”

Taako leans on Lup’s umbrella, and he thinks he’s using it as a cane to keep himself upright after everything. “Listen, if we’re going to follow a litch, you have to give us some kind of proof we can trust you.” He shifts his weight and leans more into Magnus now, hooking the umbrastaff onto his wrist. “I know you saved our asses back there, sure, but that doesn’t mean much in the long run.”

Merle jumps in with a gruff agreement. “You do always seem to show up at the worst of times. Before or after the danger, but I’m pretty sure that’s you.”

That was just really bad fucking timing on his part, but Merle has a point.

“You’re still a litch, my man. Don’t know if you noticed, but the last two we ran into were pretty fucked up.”

“I noticed.”

Merle nods at Taako, and steps a little closer to the still-motionless form of a wooden Magnus. “So give us a reason to trust you.”

Because you fucking know me, he doesn’t say. That would have been static to them. Because you’re my family, even if you don’t know it. Because I’ve been beating my brains out trying to get to this moment, and I didn’t think I’d have to prove myself, because I never think of what comes after, just all the befores.

“Because I can explain mostly everything,” he says instead of all that. “I _can_. But you just. You have to follow me away from here.”

Taako and Merle exchange glances. They’re not happy ones.

“Only because the energy here still sucks,” Merle grumbles finally. “How far ‘re we goin’?”

Barry could have hugged the old curmudgeon. “Not far,” he sighs, relieved. “Maybe fifteen minutes until I can start trying to explain. A day to get where we’re going.”

Taako grabs Magnus’ good arm and tugs it forward a bit, experimenting (ever the scientist, even when he didn’t know). The wooden dummy stumbles forward, but stays upright. “Well thank gods he can _walk_ ,” Taako sighs. “Not about to burn a spell because he’s…whatever this is. What’d you do to him, anyway?”

They both look at him expectantly, and he raises his hands quickly. “Nothing! Nothing, I swear. He’s, uh.” Well, shit he wasn’t sure how to phrase that. “I can’t really explain that one to you. Not…yet anyway.”

“Because we’re here?” asks Merle.

He shakes his head. “Because I’m not sure you’d get it yet.”

They both give him blanks looks, and for a moment he thinks they’ve heard static, but Merle just shrugs and waves his wooden arm, resigned. “Fine. Lead the way.”

And he does, the four of them trailing into the Felicity Wilds.

Above them, the sky is gray and still, and right now only fills Barry with raw, unbridled dread.

They keep moving.

* * *

 

_There on a weird planet with a purple sky and a clear view of the space beyond even though the atmosphere is thick enough to support all the life in this world._

_And it’s absolutely teeming with life._

_Barry is looking at some spell component stones in a beautiful and busy bazaar when he hears a familiar voice—out of breath and talking too fast, but familiar—ask him, “Barold, bag of holding?”_

_He looks up at Taako, at the urgency in his voice hidden well behind the blasé tone and the way he picks at his fingernails. “Uh. What?”_

_“Your bag. It’s a Bag of Holding, yeah?”_

_“Yeah?” he holds it out for Taako to see. “So?”_

_“I need to climb in that and I need you to lie through your teeth about where cha’boy went, capisce?”_

_Barry blinks. “Uhm. I’m sorry, what the fuck?”_

_Taako grabs his shoulders and leans in. “Put me in the bag, and forget you saw me! Do it!”_

_Barry rears back. “Taako what the hell—“_

_“Barold damn it, I don’t pay you to ask questions! Open the bag or I’ll blow a spellslot on you, I swear—“_

_“Alright, alright!” Barry shouts. It’s been a few years now, but Barry is still pretty intimidated by Taako, and by his sister but for…different reasons. Taako is loud, honest, prickly, kind of an asshole, a great cook, a powerhouse of transmutation magic, and usually makes good on his threats. He opens his bag as wide as it will go, and Taako steps down into it quickly._

_“Not a fucking word!” he hisses as Barry closes the drawstrings. The bag is enchanted to be bottomless in a way, and is carpetbag print and ugly as all hell, but it had been a gift to him from one of the worlds they’d saved, and it’s really useful for restocking the Starblaster and shopping sprees and now apparently hiding elves._

_He half expects Lup to round the corner and for there to be some strange sibling argument that’s half in elvish and half in common and wholly solvable with the use of a label maker, the word “sharing,” or “so-and-so makes it work.”_

_Who comes around the corner though is a regal looking fellow with fair lavender skin, orange markings on his face, ears and faced pierced to the nines, and looking quite put out as he swivels his head to search the bazaar. His mouth is pushed forward in an odd kind of overbite and he’s got something sprouting from his head that ends in a little glowing dewdrop and matches his face paint. Two pink-purple creatures that look like a cross from body builders and if oreads had skin instead of rock, and are meathead-standard big and dumb flank him, and Barry makes a sound that is half squeak and half an “oh” of surprise._

_“You there,” the man shouts, spotting him staring. “Creature. I’m looking for someone.”_

_“Uh,” Barry says. Taako said to lie, but he’s really not good at that, so he hesitates. “That’s nice.”_

_“He’s tall. Handsome. Lithe. Has long blond hair, and delicately slender ears. A slight overbite, I think. Dressed to kill?”_

_“Do you normally ask strangers if they’ve seen you’re dream guy, or is this a weird pick-up line? Like ‘have you seen my dream guy, no, well you’ll do, here’s my num—‘“_

_The flesh-oread on the man’s left lifts him by the collar, and Barry’s feet and a little of his dignity leave the ground with it. The fish guy barks something in a language Barry hadn’t bothered to study this cycle.He gives a startled yelp when he’s dropped again, stumbling back._

_“I have no time for jokes, creature,” the guy says stepping into Barry’s personal bubble, and oh it is **on** as soon as he can muster up the courage to shove this guy away. “I am looking for that man. I saw him run down here into the bazaar and I wish to find him.”_

_He’s in Barry’s face, watching his eyes, which makes it hard to lie, so Barry says, “You should work on finding a breath mint first.”_

_Behind him, one of the not-oreads snort, and the lavender fella frowns deeper. He fists Barry’s robe and drags him that much closer—and shit his breath really does smell awful, briny and weird and his teeth are sharp and needly, and Barry thinks, oh, he kind of looks like an anglerfish—and snarls, “Where is he?”_

_Barry raises an eyebrow, and tries to pull away. He’s pretty intimidated, but not so much that he’d give Taako up that easily. “Yeah, sure, want me to pull that information out of my ass, buddy?” Barry tries. “I saw someone run by me like, ten minutes ago, maybe five, but that was out of the corner of my eye.”_

_The anglerfish drops him and turns to his bizarre bodyguards. “Check on that end. Meet here in a hour.”_

_They part ways, and Barry shuffles off into the nearest alleyway until he can dump Taako onto the ground with a, “That went well.”_

_“I’ll say,” Taako grumbles, picking himself up and brushing himself off. “Thug’s really got it in for me. Kinda clingy, didn’t sign up for that.”_

_“What did you even do?” Barry asks, watching the area he’d just comes from warily._

_Taako snorts. “Went out last night to hunt for info on the Light, my man,” he starts. “Thought, hey, if anyone’s got info or rumors or something on who would house such a thing it’s gotta be the local brothels, right?_

_“Right, exactly right, so I’m strolling in, looking fine and needle-mouth back there is talking to a receptionist and y’know, guy looks like he’s got beaucoup bucks to just throw around, so I think, guy in charge, right?_

_M’nope, so wrong, turns out he’s the governor’s son, and he works there as a secret side thing, yeah? So I’m like, well shit, this fucker, this guy he’s got to have information. Son of the fool who runs this place? Got’cha answers right there. So I get a room—“_

_“You **slept with him**?!” Barry hisses. “Taako for crying out loud, did you sleep with him and not **pay**?”_

_“Oh my man, you haven’t even heard the half of it,” Taako snickers. “Listen. So I get to asking him about a ‘shooting star’ I saw landing and I say, “you know where it landed? Some say right in this town,’ and he says, ‘oh yes, my father was just talkin’ about it, I can take you to see it sometime,’ and then he, y’know, came because all you really have to do is give good head for a few minutes, ask a man a question before climax, and they’ll tell you anything.”_

_“Are you out of your mind!” Barry laughs. It’s **hysterical** , yeah, but gods above… “Did you pay or not?”_

_“Hell no!” Taako says, affronted. “Hell no, did **I** come?”_

_“Did you?”_

_“No,” Taako snaps, and he seems a little pouty. “I got info, the guy climaxed and fell asleep next to me, I jerked it in the bathroom and left. If anything, he should pay **me**.”_

_“Taako,” Barry whines. “It’s two months into this place, please don’t tell me you’re going to have to blow a disguise spell on yourself every time you step into public.”_

_“What’s he gonna do?” Taako asked. “Besides, I tipped the lady at the front really well.”_

_“Did we at least get an invite to the governor’s place, or was that just something he was saying?”_

_“Dunno. Got his name to drop though, so we just gotta bluff out way in, homie.” Taako looks at his nails, picking at the polish. “Speaking up bluffing though, good job back there. You’re a bad liar, but fortunately fish-lips is pretty dumb.”_

_“Fortunately.”_

_“Thanks for the use of your fugly bag too.”  
_

_“Hey!” Barry says, drawing his eyebrows together. “Don’t insult my bag. It hid you well enough, show some respect.”_

_“It’s carpet bag patterned.”_

_“So?”_

_“Fug to the lee.”_

_Barry rolls his eyes._

_“Don’t tell Lup about this, by the way. As far as you know, I faced the problem with panache and well-timed insults like usual.”_

_“Are you kidding?” Barry snorts. “Of the entire crew, Lup might actually die if she doesn’t hear this story.”_

_“I mean it, Bluejeans. I will use real milk in everything I make. Everything. I will never, ever stop, and you’ll either have to eat shitty burnt toast and crap eggs every day, or enjoy the view of the Starblaster’s bathrooms.”_

_“What,” Barry askes, adjusting his bag and heading for the opposite end of the alley, “don’t tell her you sucked off Anglerfish and pissed him off by not paying or giving him your number **and** jumped into my ‘fugly’ bag to hide yourself from your number one fan?”_

_Taako rolled his eyes dramatically, and his body followed with a loud groan. “Whole milk is so expensive…” he whined. “But I will truly have to suffer through it, it seems, boohoo, poor me and my poor pouch filled with milk-buying gold…”_

_Barry laughs at that, and Taako grins and drags him out of the alleyway fully. They hide between kiosks and shop a little, staying relatively hidden until sundown and sneak on to the Starblaster before dinner was even started._

* * *

 

Well, there are more confusing things than being in a spa-themed demiplane folded inside a strange elf’s bag so that he can break into a base because a coin he doesn’t remember ever buying tells him to in his own voice.

He’s got absolutely no idea what could be more confusing, but there has to be something.

He doesn’t feel jostled or shaken as he travels inside this bag. In fact, Barry is feeling pretty relaxed. The light is low in here, and it smells like something heavy and beachy and calming. It makes it easy to deal with the headache he’s been starting to form. He’s not really sure what it’s from, but he’s betting it’s at least partly from how crowded it starts to feel once he realizes that he’s stuffed in a bag and not actually in a small spa-like room.

He takes a calming breath and waits it out.  
Barry doesn’t like this, but there is a pit of anxiety in his stomach that tells him he’s running out of time, even though he doesn’t understand why.

Nothing is really…catching up for him right now. He’s been spit out of some kind of incubation tube, naked and without memory in front of three strangers who handed him clothes and claimed to know him. The coin had been pretty urgent in what he was supposed to do, and the people and wooden guy in the cave even more so, and Barry just goes with it because—

Because.

There’s something there, a tug he feels taught in his shoulders and gut that says he’s done this before, that he’s trusted this blindly before, but it’s numb in the beck of his head, and he can only put it together that he’s supposed to trust these people, even if he doesn’t know why.

He tells them this, the dwarf and the elf, and it’s sincere enough that they let him stay.

He’s not sure where they are when his headache starts to worsen, and he feels sideways and drunk and tired and moved around. When he recovers, it’s hard for him to pay attention to everything. Things come through muffled, but they _do_ come through, and Barry doesn’t recognize it as the coin’s voice—his voice, _this is so fucking bizarre—_ so he opens his mouth to call out to Taako, the elven wizard who’s bag he’s in. And then something warm washes over him, glittery and gold without actually being seen, just a feeling he gets, and he blurts loudly, “Hey, I’m hiding in this guy’s bag and I’m getting kind of claustrophobic and also I’m not supposed to be up here!”

Well, fuck!

What the fuck was _that_? Zone of Truth?

He’s had enough of this, and so he takes a step out of the spa, wriggling out of the bag a bit to get a gulp of fresh air, just as Taako lets out a curse.

And watches as the wizard explains the situation—which is far more weird and complicated and filled with some weird, hissing static?—to a child who’s wearing fancy clothes, and brandishing a wand with the tip in the shape of a star. It’s a only a little disturbing—should this kid be here? This is supposed to be a dangerous mission, and dragging this poor child along…

But he nods, and understands despite the hesitancy in Taako’s tone and the distaste in the cleric, Merle’s, and looks like he’s taking it all down in his head and solving a puzzle, so Barry stays silent.

After the kid—Angus, as he understands it—tags along, Taako dumps Barry onto the floor, and he and Merle start after the kid.

Barry rubs his head and gets to his feet hurrying after them. The coin isn’t talking, which is a real problem only when they get to a keypad that none of them know how to crack.

Taako even looks to him, and Barry shrugs. He might be the voice in the coin, but Barry knows fuck-all about what’s happening.

Merle get’s out some sort of talking lawn decoration which both he and Angus, he finds, are staring at in wonder and a little bit of confusion as he berates the cleric. Taako sighs and digs into his bag.

He slings a hole into the door, and Taako tucks a weird slingshot back into he bag with a roll of his eyes. “Done and done,” he mutters. “Stupid idiot, trying to use a lock picker on a keypad.”

Barry opens his mouth to comment on that, but there’s a feeling of nausea that overcomes him right as he steps through the door.

The room looks like the one he remembers waking up in a few hours ago. Barry’s almost shaken by how similar it actually is. There are maps and books and papers everywhere, but instead of the chaos that was the cave, this was organized. Neat. His mind goes to say something about that too, and again there is something glossing over it, slipping and sliding away from the though like water through opened fingers.

There is also a holy symbol on the desk too, which Barry, for some reason, blames for nausea and splitting headache he’s getting.

And in the corner of the room is…something. Eldritch and fuzzy, whatever is in that corner Barry understands that he’s unable to see it fully, but is unable to understand why.

He thinks, with no small amount of surprise, that his is the same feeling his brain has gotten every time it’s skipped and blurred over connections he tries to make, and there is a sharp pang followed by numb static, and he winces but doesn’t move.

The coin clicks to life.

_“Okay. Now you should have had enough time by now to get in there and drink. So you should be remembering now, but I might take you awhile. But the short version is, we’re all—“_

And then static.

“—and—“ Static. “—was one of us, but—“ Static. It keeps cutting in and out like this, and Barry just feels dizzy and upset, though for the latter he can’t say why. The four of them exchange looks, each of varying degree of fear and…hurt? It looks like hurt on the boy’s face, but for what he isn’t sure.

The elf huffs and heads over to the tank with a confidence that Barry knows he can’t feel, not with how dizzy it makes them. He fills what looks to be a flask, and comes back, taking a small sip from it.

Merle takes a sip as well.

He hesitates on giving Barry a sip, and, well, that’s fair, Barry doesn’t trust himself either, really.

The kid drinks as well, and then, with a sigh the cleric takes it back and hands it to him. There is still mistrust in his eye, and a turn of his mouth that’s sour in disapproval. “Take a _sip_ ,” he says sternly.

Barry nods a little.

Awareness comes back slowly, but he remembers as he’s taking a tiny sip that he has a flask in his pocket, and goes to fill it with the baby Voidfish’s ichor for—

It is fucking _awful._

God, all the gods, _gods_ it fucking hurts, he’s done this a million times, but never as a human and fitting a hundred stolen years in your body after years of only remembering when you’re dead is so fucking painful. He feels tears spring into his eyes, and doubles over a little, clutching his head—

_On a hill with her, her eyes bright in the sun, about to die and become—_

It hurt’s, hurt’s so bad, and he’s _used_ to this but it _hurts—_

_Red robes hanging in the breeze, a beach and a brother in front of him, he’s learning—_

Fuck, fuck _fuck,_ he falls to the ground, and he’s shaking his head and it _hurts—_

_Their captain snorting and flinging something across the table as revenge, a food fight—_

This hurts. And he’s used to remembering, and it still feels like his skull is splitting—

_IPRE. I. P. R. E. Sildar Hallwinter, it is with great pleasure that we inform you of your acceptance into the Institute of Planar Research and Exploration—_

It’s like phasing his being ten years ago with his current form now, and it hurts but he’s used to remembering, they’re not, oh god, god, this with _kill them—_

 _Lup, dead, ten years looking, found her dead, Lup’s smile, a fireball in the living room, drunk on a ship a billion years away from **home**_ —

“Boys,” he begs, trying to speak clearly. He can see it dawning on them. “Don’t…try to remember too fast, it’ll take you out—“ A wave of different nausea and _fuck you Lucretia, dammit all_ —“Muh…Merle, can you do something about that holy symbol, please, before…before…”

_Home. IPRE. Lup. Taako. Magnus. Davenport. Merle. Lucreatia. Family. Home, with two suns and a purple sky and one moon and the IPRE and—_

People coming, responding to the bell.

Merle casts to Pan, and it is silence he knows it, because Merle’s spell doesn’t fizzle, it doesn’t work, he has no powers

_and it’s the Hunger_

it has to be the what’s happening right now and Merle turns off the Holy Symbol which works, it works but this is worse, it’s

_the end it’s the end of the_

world it’s the Hunger

_it’s the Hunger the Hunger is here and he_

remembers everything, as the four of them are dragged to meet Lucretia.

He begs them to take it slow as the years slow and details fill in for him.

This might kill them. If they don’t listen to him, this might kill them.

They’re brought—brought mostly without resistance—to the Director, to Lucretia, but he can see the ichor start to work on the boys.

Davenport stands near her, and she’s channeling her spell, the spell that she made, that she wanted to use to cut the plane off from everything as they come in, still trying so hard to be impassive, to save the world _her way_ and he only half loses it as he breaks away from the people holding him up and rushes at her.

It’s a shoddy plan, and it works, he gets the flask into Dav’s hand after fighting with him and from there he can just cast Command, but for a second he wishes it hadn’t worked at all.

One hundred years of family.

Two years of shared guilt.

Ten years of isolation, dying, fighting, and searching all on his own, being vilified and left _alone_.

She did that, and the rage, the hurt, the actual physical pain that he’s in right now, it bubbles up and he bites his tongue and swallows copper and spit so he doesn’t have to scream and make this worse.

They’re watching the staff, Merle and Taako, and Barry is watching them. It hits Taako first then Merle almost directly after, and each of them give a sharp, pained cry.

Angus jumps at this and goes in to comfort Taako, shouting, “Sir?!” and Barry is thankful that one of the guards behind them gently pulls him back.

“Oh my god,” Lucretia breathes, and Barry wants to curse her for this. “Did you—did you inoculate yourselves?” She sounds horrified, and god, he wants to hate for this, but she’s still so young, now that he knows what’s happened to her she’s still so, _so_ young and he hates her but he doesn’t and can’t and—

“Yes,” Merle says, through gritted teeth. “We did.”

She _reels_. “I-its gonna be to much—you—you’re gonna remember too much it’s too—to specific you’ll be _killed—“_ Oh good, so she does know that’s a definite thing that can happen. “Why did you _do that?!”_

Now, he thinks, and begins to mutter the spell. He feels Taako’s eyes on him, but he will do nothing but set this in motion.

He did not wait all this time to fail to get his family back, to fail Lup, to fail himself.

 _“Drink.”_ He mutters it, a demand, a plea, a threat, anything and everything.

Davenport drinks.

Lucretia asks him to repeat it.

Barry begs her, begs her to help them remember. He blames her, he begs her, she owes them this, please.

Lucretia explains, she looks sorrowful; she looks like she regrets it. She looks like she doesn’t.

Taako and Merle listen, and remember.

Barry listens, and remembers.

She says Lup, she apologizes for Lup. Barry looks away, pained, and he can see Taako’s face stained with tears he doesn’t understand just yet.

Davenport, their captain, after ten years, remembers, and speaks.

Magnus rushes in from the hellscape outside, followed by an orc woman and a small dragonborn and a large robot.

He, too, remembers.

And outside…outside…

Is the Hunger, the end of the world.


	4. Chapter 4

_They lie on their backs as the afternoon settles into evening on this quiet world, the grass damp from the rain earlier that afternoon, The storm has since moved to the horizon, and it’s doing strange and beautiful things to the clouds and the sun as it sets over an ocean that doesn’t move._

_This world is empty, but the beauty of this does not escape them, and so when he gives her a day he doesn’t do anything crazy, and they find their own adventure through fate and whoever runs it in this world._

_Barry feels the dampness from the ground soak into his back through his robe, but Lup told him not to pay it any mind, had grabbed his hand and he was powerless against her, really, so he lay back and relaxed as the day ended around them._

_“It’s like we’re in our own little world,” Lup says suddenly. “Like, not just this—this is great though—but all of us. It’s pretty rad.”_

_“Kind of like the beach year,” Barry agrees. “But, y’know, without the briney smell and Mangus popping up everywhere.”_

_“Without that beach-life feel, yeah,” she laughs. Lup turns onto her side, propping her self up in her elbow and rests her head in her hand, looking down at him in way that makes him feel warm. He’s staring up at her from the flat of his back, and in this light the flecks of bright green found in most elvish eyes dance and shimmer, a kaleidoscope of beauty and an insurmountable amount of love._

_“Hey,” he says softly. He reaches up to tuck some hair behind her ears. They flick back a bit as he traces the outline. “What’s up?”_

_Lup hums and leans into his hand instead. “Nothing. Thinking about our very goth wedding coming up,” she teases._

_“It’s not really a wedding,” Barry tells her. “We can get Merle in on it if we want it to be a **wedding** wedding.” And a real party, he thinks. The dwarf can really slam back the booze. _

_Lup snorts. “And ruin the surprise? No thank you.”_

_He watches her face turn from teasing to serious, and she shifts so that she’s laying mostly on top of him, holding herself up with one arm by his head and keeping his hand on her face with the opposite hand. “Barry,” she says, softly, “we’re ready for this right? I feel ready for this.”_

_He bites his lip. In truth, he feels ready for this too, but it doesn’t serve to make him feel any less frightened. “I’m terrified,” he admits. “But I’ve gone this far. What about you?”_

_Lup nods. “I still have to tell Taako,” she whispers. “Not everything all at once, but…I need to tell him to give me a Day.”_

_“You’re just gonna flat out ask?”_

_Lup laughs fully at this. “Darling, my flair for the dramatic can’t be wasted to ask my brother if he’ll be the older sibling for just one day.”_

_“I thought you were older?”_

_“Only when I want to be.”_

_“Fair,” Barry chuckles. He feels those butterflies threaten to choke him, as they have since he’d first seen her. And out of his mouth pop the words, “Hey. Do you wanna marry me?”_

_Lup pulls back at this, amused and shocked. “I’m sorry?”_

_Barry feels his face heat up. “Uh,” he says, and really, how poetic is that? Uh. Wow. “I mean I know we’ve joked about it while researching,” he starts._

_Lup raises an eyebrow. “Till death do us part, and then death parting us, and then still being together after that? Yeah, I remember, I invented the joke.” She pulls back a bit, and her eyebrows are scrunched together. Lup looks upset, and Barry is about to backtrack when she says, without a hint of sarcasm, “You do not get to propose before I do.”_

_He blinks at that, and sits up. He’s still holding her face in his hand. “Huh?”_

_“Barold J Bluejeans, you do **not** get to propose to me first,” she says, and seems exasperated that she has to repeat herself. “Excuse **you** very much, but that’s my thing, I’ve been hinting at it ever since I made the joke, I have copyright over that, you don’t get to—“_

_Barry is laughing, and Lup is dissolving into fits of giggles while trying to berate him. “I’m being serious!” she yells, swatting his arm playfully. “Barry, marry me, make me the happiest lady in the land.”_

_“Oh no way!” Barry says, and bursts out laughing when she sticks out her tongue. “I asked first!”_

_“Doesn’t count. That’s against the rules.”_

_“There are no rules.”_

_“Barry will—“_

_“Lup, will you marry me?” he interrupts her, saying it a little louder and a little faster and making her throw her head back and howl with laughter._

_“No fuckin’ way, uh-uh. Barry, will you marry **me**?” she challenges, voice cracking with laughter on the word “marry.”_

_“Absolutely not. Lup Taako,” he tries, gasping and grinning, “will you marry **me** , please?”_

_“No way, José,” she laughs, tilting them back and back until she’s on top of him, pinning his hands to the grass, fingers folded with his. “Barry Bluejeans, will you marry **me** , pretty please with whipped cream and a cherry on top?”_

_“Temptress, you know I have a weak spot for cherries,” he jokes._

_“Oh I know. I’m prepared to play dirty, babe.”_

_“Promise?”_

_“Ooh, kinky and tempting,” she laughs, leaning in to press a kiss to his cheek. “But not enough. I’m winning this.”_

_“You’re not. Lup, will you marry me?”_

_“Nope, you marry **me**. You know you want to.”_

_“Maybe I will, if you marry **me**.” _

_She’s laughing so hard now and it’s infectious, and his entire being swells with love, and really how could tethering yourself to the earth with a love this strong scare him, especially in moments like these?_

_“Marry me,” he repeats, breathless._

_She looks into his eyes, and asks the same of him, just as breathless, just as insisting, just, “Marry me,” as their laughter dies down._

_And Barry concedes. “Yes,” he tells her, and her fingers tighten around his in surprise. “I’ll marry you. You win. I really want to, Lup. I do. After we do this, before we do this, when we find a new home, right now, doesn’t matter. I’ll marry you. Yes.”_

_She leans in close. She kisses him softly, and he kisses back. His hands have been released in favor of holding his face, and so now they follow the curve of her back, keeping them close together._

_“I love you,” she tells him, and kisses him again and again, tasting the spring day on their lips and the sunset in their breath._

_“I love you,” he tells her back between kisses, tasting smoke and salt and lavender on her lips, the taste of life, the taste of Lup._

_“I love you.”_

* * *

They’re having a rough time. These creatures, these tainted dead armies of the Hunger, they’re powerful. Barry is hurling spell after spell, both of the necromantic and litch persuasion, but he’s not making a dent.

Magnus gets atop a rhino and manages to stab it in the eye, but it’s not much.

Taako goes flying across the room, and his staff (the one he pointed at Lucretia just moments ago) goes clattering in a different direction.

He’s focusing on his own fights, trying to keep them protected, trying hard to stay alive—everything in the vicinity is getting _toasted_ if he dies right now—when it happens.

Angus McDonald is backhanded by a large shadowy hand and hits the wall hard enough that _Barry_ feels it.

Everyone in the room cries out, himself included, but no one can move toward him, no one can get over there past this column of glistening black pillars with shifting lights and colors to get to the kid.

He hears Taako shout something, probably a curse, and then the kid’s name.

The child stirs, and thank the gods they can no longer hear, gets up and grabs—

The umbrella and there's a rhino advancing on you, kid, don’t ask permission—

Barry launches another spell, this one at the base of the darkness, trying to get it to disa—

Something comes out of the umbrella that might have been fireball once upon a time. It might have been cast that way, but he can almost hear the fury in it, the power, he _knows this power,_ and he watches Taako’s face because he probably got it a lot sooner, as soon as Angus started the incantation for whatever he casts because he’s catching the umbrella as it’s tossed to him and breaking it over his knee and Barry—

Is flung back with such force that his ears ring, but he’s in no pain. And he’s only flung back a few feet, because across the room, he sees Taako, who must have been flung several.

The room is filled with a red glow, and flames and heat consume the beasts and then the pillar is filled with bright red-orange light, that turns to white and hot, climbing the length of the thing. And nothing but the Hunger is harmed, everyone is untouched as the thing explodes, really and truly explodes in a shower of fireworks and flame and sparks and there in the aftermath…well, there she is.

He feels a little silly really. It only occurs to him then as she hovers where the Hunger’s minions once stood, that even though they have mortal bodies, they can’t die. He’d thought somehow that she’d be destroyed in this form too, but how could that be, really? He hadn’t been paying attention, he should have known by the time the battle in Wonderland had ended. Lup was an unsinkable ship, a spit-fire evocation master, a bomb in elven form; she wouldn’t have gone down at the hands of anything else but the one thing made to do just what it did.

Taako had been right back then. The umbrastaff was pretty stupid in the end.

Her robes billow back and away from the shadowy form of her body, and he can see the flames still yet to be extinguished roll over and up and away from her. Her hood is up, her skeletal fingers are coated in brilliant flame. She’s wreathed in her fire and in the heat and after glow of sparks, and it’s beautiful.

It’s Lup.

She turns to Taako, and for a moment Barry thinks she’s about to thank him, or yell at him for being stupid and not understanding, but no. Instead she yells, “You’re _dating the grim reaper?!”_

And despite the apocalypse, it’s been ten fucking years since he’s heard her voice. Ten long fucking years, and for the better part of the last one he stupidly thought she was long gone.

So Barry laughs a bit, just to cover up the sob of happiness in his throat.

* * *

They’re on the ground fighting as Taako tries and tries to transmute Phandalin’s ruins into sapphire. Again and again and again.

Behind them is the scientist—the one who owns the floating lab—Lucas inside a mech suit made from a fucking terrifying elevator.

He’s next to Lup, hurling a spell at one of the creatures rushing toward them. “Is it weird to say I missed this?” he asks, loudly over the din. In the background, Lucas slams a creature down on its back and then tosses it into a crowd of ten more. Nice.

Lup laughs and send an arc of red electric into the middle of a gaggle of giant man-like creatures shambling toward them. A few of them explode, to both their delight.

“There’s a lot going on here babe,” Lup says, like she’s talking about the weather. “The end of the world, trying not to die, my brother transmuting shit while we—“ another blast and another explosion from Lup, two more spells and a well aimed rock from Barry—“while we flirt. You’re going to have to be a little more specific?”

Barry laughs a little. “All of it? Mostly just doing it with you.”

She doesn’t need a face for Barry to know exactly what she latched on to.

“No, not—“

“Just wait until I get my body back,” she teases, blowing him a spectral kiss and them moving forward a bit to kick ass.

Barry looks over to see—a food cart? The fuck?—before turning back to watching his brother’s back.

There’s twenty minutes of nothing but fighting and idle banter (“You know what I mean!” “I sure do, and I’m choosing to ignore it. We’ll do mushy after ass kicking, deal?”) before something explodes behind them.

Taako is lying prone a few feet away, on his back and looking up at the pitch-black nothingness that is the sky.

“Holy shit!” Lup shouts over to him. “Are you okay?”

Taako staggers to his feet, and Barry rears back in surprise. He’s…crackling with some kind of power he’s never really seen, but its red, and bright, and then green, and then periwinkle, the color of transmutation magic as Taako touches what’s left of Phandalin and opens a portal to the Astral Plane.

He’s not sure exactly what goes through him at seeing Kravitz again in the middle of this raised town, staring at Taako like he’s his moon and stars. Fear? Annoyance? Reluctant relief that doesn’t quite sink in when Taako goes misty-eyed and runs into the Reaper’s arms and kisses him with more enthusiasm than he’s ever seen Taako throw at anything?

Probably the latter.

In the distance there is a Judge, imposing and horrible, pitching forward. There is light, and then the Judge is falling, falling, and then it’s gone, and all they can see is smoke and ember flying up and up.

From behind them, Lucas says, in shock mostly, “My lab…”

And then he’s not watching this display anymore, and neither is Lup because the ground is shaking and there is a Judge in front of them, looming and way too close. It’s just over them. “We have a bigger problem,” Lup screams, “I don’t know how to kill that!”

Barry’s right there with her, he has no fucking idea, trying and failing to think of a plan.

He doesn’t need to; the hand of the Judge goes to crush them, and a very spooky, very large, and probably very _illegal_ hand comes out of the sapphire circle and catches it.

A legion of ghosts; color Barry very fucking impressed.

He hears Kravitz murmuring to Taako, and then Taako calls them over right before the Reaper flies off to watch over Legion.

Barry gives an awkward wave—because really, how do you say, nice to meet you, possible future brother in law, I remember kicking your ass and handing it to you and striking a deal with your goddess—and Lup says hello in a very Lup way. Kravitz takes off, and the armies cease to come for them. They make their way back to the moon.

* * *

 

They’re going to cut the Hunger off; it’s Like Lucretia’s original plan, but instead of this plane, they’ll treat the entirety of the Hunger like a plane, and fuck Taako, where was this idea one hundred years ago? He’s shocked to his core, and Lucretia and Lup are too.

The columns move together in the distance, and over the edge of the moon, they can see the army pouring out of one massive pillar, heading for Neverwinter.

Lup looks at Barry.

Barry looks at Lup.

They have allies all over the place it seems, and they all join them, fighting from all angles. All over the world. All through the planes.

They’ll win this. They have to.

They say goodbye, and Lucretia…she apologizes, and for the moment, he thinks that if this works, he will one day forgive her like Lup has.

If this doesn’t, he will die on this world, with this world. They all will.

So they say goodbye, slowly, and then speeding up at they realize they really have to go.

They say goodbye, and the boys disappear inside the Starblaster, take off, and are gone inside the Hunger.

The rest of them head to the fighting grounds.

They’re going to fight. They’re going to win.

* * *

 

It’s a game that they used to play a hundred years ago, just the seven of them. A silly, sick little game to keep the gnawing fear at bay. And it’s on an even bigger scale now.

“Twenty five!” shouts Killian, the orcish woman, cleaving a giant wolf in half. “Whoo!”

“Thirty two!” Carey, the dragonborn, says, standing in a circle of electric flame. “Come on, Killian, you can catch up!”

“Let’s be on teams!” she shouts back, and shoots her giant crossbow at a huge robotic looking mass. “Fifty eight!” she shouts, and Carey shrieks with hysterical laughter. “We have fifty eight now!

“You can’t just team up!” shouts another dragonborn from far away. “That’s cheating! Tanzer, how many do you have? I wanna team up!”

“No way!” says a human ranger, further away, cutting down a smaller beast as it lunges at a taller elf at his back. “I want bragging rights after this. Tom, go long!” he hits a creature flying at him and it falls backward and diagonal and lands on a pike that one of the Tom Bodetts is driving forward.

“Nice!”

“Amateurs!” Barry shouts. He sends a red bolt out of his wand and it cuts through three shapeless fuckers and he howls with triumph. “Forty eight on my _own_!”

“Give them a break, Barold!” Lup shouts. “It’s their first apocalypse! You’ve had a hundred!” She releases a ball of energy a huge monsters leg and watches as the energy chains up and up and up into the cloud around its head. There is a loud boom and a few groups of the army explode a couple feet away. “But just so we’re clear? Two hundred forty two. _Just_ so we’re clear. And that’s with some extreme rounding down.”

“Seventeen, I think!” comes Angus’ voice. “I just started counting!”

“Hell yeah, kid!” Barry shouts. He extinguishes a large thing that’s crawling arm over arm toward the boy detective.

Lup laughs loudly. “Atta boy, Ango! Kick ass with that fireball! You’re doing so well!”

“Th-thank you, ma’am!”

Carey shouts, “Hey don’t try to butter him up, he’s on our team, we need seventeen more points!”

In the distance, a battlewagon screeches and swerves into a hulking dragon-like beast, and it splatters and bursts like a balloon filled with paint. Two dryads in the driver seat are screaming in pure delight and high-fiving

It keeps going like this, keeping score, joking to keep from drowning their own fear. Protecting those around them.

They fight, they tease, they fight some more, and they win.

They push back, and they win.

They win.

_They win._

* * *

 

And then…light.

* * *

 

_The week following the end of the Judge year is rough on all of them, but Lucretia is the one that took the big hit._

_After the year had finished, and she told them the story of her year, they’d all held her close. She’s exhausted, and cannot rest fully now, though this is something that she doesn’t say. The solitude that once filled her life is now stifling for her, after a year of hiding and running and surviving. She’d done it all alone, and gods if they weren’t all so proud of her for everything she had done._

_The weight of the year, the toll it’s taken on her, it does not go unobserved by the crew._

_And so they sleep in the den, with blankets and pillows and a fire going thanks to a little transmutation and evocation magic from the twins._

_Lucretia is currently out cold, resting on Lup’s chest as the elf cards her hands gently through the other’s curls. Taako bears the burden of Lucretia’s feet in his lap, holding an untouched mug of hot chocolate, courtesy of Barry, too tired to refuse something he’s cooked. Magnus is passed out in an armchair, snuggled under three blankets and sprawled out, and Davenport and Merle are on either side of him, arguing._

_“It can’t happen again,” Dav is saying vehemently. “It’s too dangerous leaving only one of us alive.”_

_“Did I fuckin’ say ‘we’re all expendable?’” Merle bites out. “No, I **didn’t**_ **.** _I’m sayin’ we can’t just restrict ourselves to the ship because of a fluke.”_

_“The Hunger comes every **fucking** year, and if we have another ‘fluke’ Merle, we are **finished**.”_

_“With all do respect, Capt’n, bite me,” Merle snaps. “I hate this just as much as the six of you, but that’s not a reason to bring your stupid ‘wrath’ down on us.”_

_“It’s not **wrath** , it’s common—“_

_“Shh!” This is Lup, who is glaring at the two of them severely. “Sleeping humans. Take it outside or make nice, boys.”_

_“I’m trying—“_

_“Captain,” Barry says clearly, looking into his own mug. “I know you’re frustrated, but keeping us together by restricting our movement isn’t going to fix the problem.”_

_Davenport takes a deep, steadying breath. “I know that,” he says. “I **know** , trust me. I do know, but I just…” he sighs. “Nothing like that has happened before. I’m your captain, Barry. I have to make sure nothing happens to you lot. I have to insure nothing like that ever happens again.”_

_“Nothing will,” Lup says, and Barry’s head snaps up to look at her. She looks so serious, sound so sure. Her eye’s twinkle like she’s got…something planned, but as usual, Barry isn’t sure what it is. Only sure that it’s something that slammed sudden into her brain, like the summer wind snapping open a screen door, cementing you in time, jumping in place with a jolt as you come to understand your surroundings._

_“Nothing will,” Barry repeats anyway. He doesn’t sound sure at all, in fact, he almost trips over it._

_“Even if it does, there’s no real guarantee we won’t get out of it. If you assume the worst case scenario, everything looks half empty.” This comes from Taako, who sounds so sick of it all. The arguing, the campouts in the living area, the dying, the resetting. Just sounds so exhausted._

_Lup nods slowly, and nudges him with her foot. “We can’t keep fighting like we’re doing,” Lup whispers. “But I want to look into something with Barry soon. I think it’s a solution.”_

_Barry’s eyebrows rise up in a silent question Lup doesn’t answer, and Davenport rubs the shadows under his eyes._

_“Fine,” he says wearily. “I’m not retracting my statement, we’re sticking closer together, and staying near the ship. But if you think you have a solution Lup, I’m…I trust you. You and Barry do some amazing work and…just be careful.”_

_“We will,” Barry says._

_“We promise,” Lup says._

_“See, problem solved,” Taako grumbles, taking a sip of his drink…_

_And spitting it back into the cup. “Barold,” he sighs._

_“I didn’t have the time to make it from scratch. We have other issues.”_

_“You don’t even have the decency to use milk with your chocolate dust packet, you fuckin’ savage.”_

_Barry only shrugs._

_Merle slurps his own drink loudly, smacking his lips. “Tastes the same to me.”_

_“Yeah, for your shrewd taste buds, I’m sure it does.”_

_It breaks the tension in the room, and for the rest of the night it’s smiles, real, Taako-brand hot chocolate, and hoping beyond hope that whatever it is, Lup’s plan will push them toward…a future._

* * *

Then end of the world is rough on everyone, the entirety of every plane. Worlds must pick up and start again, and the people have to settle and rebuild. Certain planes they’ve rescued. They’ve been put back in place and fixed up, according to Magnus’ tired retelling of everything. Things are fixed and the Hunger is…gone.

They’d all been exhausted, even Lup, who wasn’t flickering dangerously but looked close to fading. Litches didn’t need to sleep, but a good time to sit and recharge would do her good. Taako had even announced that he would be taking another century to nap, and had stalked off toward his room to rest. Celebrations were still happening if Barry’s hearing was right, just above them in the other Seeker and Regulator dorms.

 _This_ dorm is very quiet despite the amount of people in it right now. Most of the seven are here, save for Davenport, who chose to sleep alone unless he couldn’t take it anymore, and Lucretia, who Barry isn’t sure would be allowed through the door anyway.

Magnus has a lot of stiches and bandages, even after healing and health potions. Merle had very sternly sentenced him to a week at least of bed rest. Poor Magnus had no energy in him to refuse or fight the order. He was asleep before he hit the pillow, and Barry is pretty sure he’s been out ever since. His light snores are all the sound in the apartment right now.

Merle had gone to bed after patching up Taako, who put up even less of a fight. Apparently the healing job post-Wonderland had done very little for his ribs, which, though no longer broken, were badly bruised. He’s also got a fractured tailbone, which he’d hardly complained about (Taako hasn’t been talking much this week, throat raw from screaming spells. Merle has been much the same. Even Barry feels it), but makes a point to move slowly for the next week, when he’s allowed to move at all. All the healing and fighting and celestial power leaving and reentering the cleric had left him happy but drained. His face had been pale, and his soulwood arm wilting a bit. But he’s resting too, somewhere in the apartment.

Angus is in Taako’s room. The kid _did_ have a few fractured ribs, and a slight concussion, but was healing nicely. Mostly, the kid had used every spell slot and then some to fight the end of the world, and would be spent for a few more weeks.

Lup has been wandering the base, getting to know everyone as best she can, in place of shaking their hand. They’d tried a few times to get her to become semi-corporeal, but whatever she’d been doing to keep herself from being absorbed fully into the umbrastaff has drained her of the ability. She wasn’t exactly cool with it—in fact the old crew had some trouble keeping her calm about the situation at first—but she was dealing. Right now, she was in Taako’s room with the elf himself and Angus, watching the boy as well.

Taako had been in and out of that room a lot today, making no secret about caring for Angus. Not today.

“He still in there?” Barry teases softly as Taako comes back from checking on his boy.

The elf nods and sits carefully on the couch. He’s not wincing as much, which is good. “Still breathing. Still waking up.”

“Good.”

They’re silent, both of their eyes closed as they relax and enjoy this moment, this new kind of life they haven’t lived in so long.

“This is surreal as fuck,” Barry sighs, opening his eyes to stare at the ceiling.

“Don’t even get me started.”

Barry sighs deeper this time and shuts his eyes agian. He’s still pretty fatigued, but he’s better off than the rest of the boys, and he’s been sticking around to help where he can. Recently that’s been helping them move to leave the Bureau. It’s been nice if not a little slow-going.

He’s about to ask Taako where he’s planning go now that his job is over, when there is a polite knock at the door.

“D’you want me to get it?” Barry asks as Taako groans. “I’m just a little bruised right now, Taako, it’s—“

Taako shakes his head. “Nah, cha’boy’s got it. It’s probably for me anyway. Fans, you know how they are. ”

He can’t see the door from here, but he can hear the discussion echoing down the small hallway.

“Hey,” he hears Taako say with such surprise and warmth that Barry blushes. “Nice to see your face again so soon. Couldn’t get enough of me, huh?”

“Naturally.” The voice is tender, and Barry hears the familiar sound of kissing. He stiffens from is place on the couch. It’s not like he hadn’t known about Taako’s beau—it had been the first thing Lup had said after escaping the umbrella, and he’d actually seen it during the fall of the second Judge—but suddenly having Kravitz in front of you and nothing but the comfortable silence of a household napping around you instead of the end of the world is jarring.

“Nice to see your limp is healing. Are you alright to stand?” the Reaper asks as they walk hand in hand into the living room.

Taako shrugs. “More or less. Not for too long, but yeah. I think.” He runs a hand through his own hair. “Babe, not that I’m not happy to see you, and believe you me I know after the ol’ S&S, Taako’s all the rage, but if you’re here for a date or that promised hookup, it might just be wine and a long-ass nap. I’m not—”

Kravitz shakes his head quickly, holding his hands up. “Oh no, no! I’m just. I wanted to see you. I mean, the wine and a nap thing sounds…so, _so_ good.”

“Oh.”

Kravitz blushes and leans in to kiss Taako’s temple, who smiles a bit and blushes too. “I’ll go get the glasses and a bottle. I know you said you’re good to stand but…”

“Eh, I’ll survive. But uh. Thanks.”

Taako goes to sit on the couch again, and Barry watches the kitchen door with no small amount of caution.

Taako gives him a look, he can feel it, but he can’t stop remembering that stupid deal, and if the events of the last week have changed anything for it. Now that is family is back, now that they all remember, now that he has _Lup,_ he’s really not going fucking anywhere.

“You good?”

Barry sighs and looks back at his friend. “Sorta. He seems uh…polite?”

Taako grins. “He’s alright. Hands are straight up from Clamilton County if you know what I mean, and he’s actually not as cool as he looks, but he’ll, uh. He’ll do.”

“I’ll do what?” Kravitz asks, walking back into the room. “Did you have…company…” He’s holding two glasses of wine in his hands, and staring at Barry like he’s still in his litch form and growing another hooded head. “Uh.”

Taako motions Kravitz over to sit next to him. “Don’t worry, I’ve trained him well. This is Barry and—uh, well. Hm. You’ve met Barry already, kinda. He was the nerd not in the mech suit when you and I hooked up in Phandalin. Waved to you? Bones my sister?”

Barry flushes bright pink at that. “Could we actually _not_ Taako, for fuck’s sake?”

The Reaper moves to set the glasses down and settle next to Taako. He wraps a careful arm around the elf, cautious of any bruising or fractures still, and Taako leans into the touch eagerly. It’s…actually kind of sweet.

So sweet, in fact, that Barry decides it’s safe to say, “Hey, Kravitz. It’s been a hot minute.”

“It certainly has,” Krav mutters, and Taako looks at them, confused. “Do I even fucking call you Hallwinter now? Everyone knows you as Bluejeans, these days, and that’s…if you’ll forgive me it’s a little ridiculous.”

“It’s not your last name,” Barry chuckles, “so don’t worry about it.”

“Fair, I guess. But Barry seems so…informal, not to mention forward, and you really don’t—again forgive me, this is so rude—but you _really_ don’t…”

“Look like a Sildar? Yeah, I know. It was Darry when I was really young, and then evolved into Barry. You can just stick with that.”

“Can’t I just call you Hallwinter?” Kravitz complains. Both of them at this point are trying to ignore Taako’s awe and slightly agape mouth. “I know that your name is basically changed legally now, but _really._ ”

“I won’t complain, but people aren’t really going to get the joke.”

Taako sits up a little fast, and winces. Krav turns to him and his hands are hovering nervously over this boyfriend as he says, “Yeah, kind of like, me, what’s the joke here? I don’t—seriously—wh—you know each other?”

Barry nods, feeling sheepish. “Sort of. I mean, I _am_ a litch. And I uh. Kept dying. So you know how he hates that, right?”

“Oh my god,” Taako gasps, and his hands fly to his mouth to stifle his giggles. “You—you and Kravtiz fuckin’ duked it out, huh? Just—heh—just kinda fought for ten years?”

“Shorter than that,” Kravitz explains. “He made a deal with the Raven Queen that I could collect him once he was finished with his job, or once ten years had passed. I think that was after…five years? Five years of fighting.”

Barry nods drawing his eyebrows together. “That tracks, I’m pretty sure. I’m way too tired to do the math, honestly, but it sounds right? Might have been four.”

Taako cracks up. “Oh that is hilarious, is that why you looked all awkward when I introduced him to Lup?” Stupid jerk, he is loving this.

“Well, that and the world was ending, doofus, it’s not really the time to bring the boyfriend home to meet the family.”

Taako leans back into a very shocked Kravitz, cackling. “I can’t believe this. How many times did he kick your ass Barry?”

Well, that’s just rude. “Zero, actually. Give me some credit, dude.”

Taako is still giggling. “Did you forgive him for those ass-whoopings, babe?”

Kraviz looks a little stiff and bites his bottom lip. “Actually…”

There are a few seconds of silence to let the word settle. Of course he wouldn’t be forgiven. The laws of life and death are still laws, and he’s still breaking them, and the enforcer is right here, drinking wine and nervously playing with his elven boyfriend’s hair .

“You’re not taking Lup,” is what he says in his defense. It’s what he decides then and there. He may owe a debt to the Raven Queen, but she doesn’t. She was murdered and deserves this, to be with her brother after everything else. “Whatever the law says, you’ll have to kill me twice, Kravitz. Sorry, Taako.”

Taako sits up a little again to look at Kravitz. “You’re not…here for work are you, Krav?”

“I wasn’t,” he says, chagrinned. “But I mean. I do have an order from the Raven Queen—“

Taako pulls away from him too fast, looking upset, and a sharp and loud, “Fuck!” escapes him as he presses his hands to his back. “Ow! _Fuckin’_ dammit. Barry, make yourself useful and go get ice.”

He does, running out of the room and grabbing an empty sack to fill with ice cubes and tea towel to wrap it in. When he comes back into the room, Lup is there, her spectral arms hovering near her brother’s in worry as he stands still, his own arms wrapped around himself and facing Kravitz, who looks extremely upset.

“That probably could have been worded better, I didn’t mean—“

“Listen, I…you know…I insert feeling here, Kravitz. I do, I really do, I think, but I swear to Gods, if you come near her, I’m not going to—I can’t lose her again, you can’t—please.”

“Koko? It’s okay, sit down. It’s cool, it’s all cool.”

“No one is in trouble, and nothing’s happening to your sister, love, I swear. By our Lady, Taako, I’m not going to take her to the Stockade.”

“You just _said_ —“

“If I have to go to ghost jail Taako, I will—“

“Uh.” Everyone turns to him, and wow doesn't that feel awful and anxiety inducing. “I have ice?”

Lup sighs in relief. “Thanks, babe.” He hands Taako the ice, and Lup winces as he presses it to his back. “Looks painful,” she murmurs.

“It fuckin’ is, thanks for noticing. Should have seen when I started vomiting blood in Wonderland. That was a trip.” He points his finger at his boyfriend. “Subject hasn’t changed, and I’m not…mad at you, sorry for the reaction but I’m not, but…you…Kravitz, you know I can’t let you take her. You know I _won’t_ let you, right?”

“I don’t—nothing is happening with either of them,” Kravitz says softly. “I really didn’t mean to scare you. I’m sorry. I have…I do have to talk to your sister and her boyfriend but I’m not…it’s not about their imprisonment. It’s a little hard to explain, and it could have been worded better, but it’s not…bad?”

“Okay.”

Barry touches Taako’s arm, and pulls away when he flinches. Lup seems frustrated at not being able to touch him at all. “You good?”

“Yeah. Yeah, give me a minute. You…” he looks at the floor and gestures with is free hand vaguely toward Kravtiz. “Explain?”

“Er. Can I stand?”

Taako nods. “I’m gonna sit, but knock yourself out.” He very slowly sits on the opposite couch.

Kravitz turns toward the both of them, wringing his hands. He looks…nervous? Barry raises an eyebrow. He imagines Lup would be doing the same.

“As you may know,” he starts, “the Raven Queen has a set of rules to enforce, and she has Reapers to enforce them.”

“No kidding,” Barry interjects.

Kravitz grimaces. “I…well, you’re both litches. My Lady cannot abide a pair litches roaming Faerun. It’s still a violation of the laws of life and death. She understands that you were doing it only because you wanted to save your family, to save the worlds you traveled to but well…a litch is a litch. And er…she really has heard the Story and Song. All the gods did, I think? Anyway, she heard the Song and Story, and she understands, but a goddess of death cannot afford to be lenient. Things like the Miller Laboratory incident happen when she is; ghosts get rowdy and impatient and hungry for a sliver of that merciful nature that she really doesn’t…have? I mean she’s merciful, but not—no, wait. Anyway—“

“I don’t want to be rude,” Lup interrupts. “But does this have a point, or is this backstory fluff for cushioning the blow that I really _do_ have to go to ghost jail?”

“Eternal Stockade,” Kravtiz corrects in a bright tone that doesn’t match the seriousness in his face. “And I told you, it’s not like that. I’m…I realize that I was rambling. Sorry.”

“Keep going, buddy,” Barry offers. “Sum it up.”

“I made a deal with her,” he says quickly. “I…we…I should make it clear. The Astral Plane is very short on Reapers, and thanks to the Hunger, not so short on lost souls that need guiding. And uh. Some that are not so lost and really kind of harmful.”

Barry’s jaw drops. “Wait. Wait, waitwaitwait.”

“Er…?”

Lup’s spectral hands are clapped over where her mouth would be. “Holy shit. Holy shit, this is a job offer.”

Barry is practically bouncing. “Holy shit!” He turns to Lup, who’s already looking at him, and he can see in that shifting darkness somehow that she’s grinning from ear to ear. “You good with this?”

“Am I fucking _good with this?_ Barold there are not _words_ for how good I am with this. Are _you_?”

Barry nods before the question is even out. “Do you know how fuckin’ _cool_ this is, not to mention all crap you can learn from the Sea of Souls, and—“

“Oh god, that one series of papers you published before the IPRE, you can—“

“I was thinking the _same thing,_ and you had started that one theory paper in like, cycle forty eight that I loved, it’s totally _—“_

“If I could interrupt?” Kravitz says weakly. “We don’t have to go right now, but there is the matter of hashing out the finer details with my Queen, and I’d like to do that sooner, rather than later. Tomorrow, if neither of you are too busy?”

“For sure,” Lup says. “And thank you.”

“Yeah, really,” Barry agrees. “Thank you this is…wow. Holy shit.”

Kravitz chuckles. “It’s really no problem.” And then he looks at Taako, who is staring at him in awe. “Are you— _oomph_!” And then tackling the Reaper wrapping his arms around the others neck and kissing him.

It ends up with Taako at Kravitz’s place, because he needs a place to lay down and, “there is a strange child in my bed that I just can’t move.” Lup and Barry spend the rest of the night talking in excited whispers.

It only occurs to him the next day—as they are talking about the details of the job, and how it might get confusing for a litch to be reaping in their natural state, but how it’s also quite fitting with the whole Look they go for and how the stories go, to be precise—that Barry realizes there is actually something he can do about Lup’s appearance. Even if it’s not a big deal for this job, it _is_ a big deal. And so he asks the Raven Queen if she’ll pardon him for breaking her rules one last time. And he shows Lup, beautiful, strong Lup, the note she’d left her family with a promise she’d been unable to keep.

She gives him a look, tilts her head a bit. “I understand why you kept this, I guess,” she starts, “but I don’t think now is the time to air our dirty laundry? Like, this is either really sweet, or really petty—“

“Actually,” Barry says, “it’s both, and then maybe a little bit genius, even if I just thought of it now.”

* * *

 

She can’t really hold him, but when he takes her to the cave where everything is still set up and explains the process, she does her best to hug him. He tells her that he loves her for the first time in a long time, because for the first time in a long time, she can hear it. She doesn’t cry, not quite, but she does say that she loves him back, and Barry does cry, just a little.

* * *

 

He’s been making new friends here and there. It’s kind of hard not to when you’re traveling all over to help fix a world that almost broke. Mostly repairs, or talking to Bureau employees like Avi, or Leon who seems pretty…less than impressed with anyone directly associated with the boys, which is a real downer. He… doesn’t go near the Fantasy Costco. The thing at the counter unsettles him—he doesn’t remember running into him at the auction all those years ago, but he had to have been there. Finding out that he was brewing a Magnus body was both a surprise and a bit creepy.

He’s been doing a lot though. Most days it’s been himself and Kravitz rounding up lost souls, and chasing unruly one down. At the Raven Queen’s behest, Lup is allowed time to adjust to the people around her and getting to know her family again, until her body is ready. Lup is only slightly annoyed by this, but mostly because he’s got a _really_ cool scythe, and she does not.

When he’s not doing that—he’s still in training after all—he’s helping rebuild where he can.

Currently, that’s with Magnus, in the slowly rising town of Raven’s Roost, surrounded by an orc woman, two dragonborns, a halfling, and an infant that seems to be the child of the latter.

Carey is holding the little halfing baby and cooing at her, pressing a kiss to her chubby cheeks. “I’m so, so glad she look’s like you, Hathy, and not _him_.”

“Mean,” her brother, Scales—or Jeremy? A mix of the two—whines. “See if I write any epics about you now.”

“Sick burn from my Lizard Girl!” Magnus calls from the kitchen. He’s apparently making lunch, and has Taako on his stone of far speech to walk him through it. Occasionally, there are shouts and muffled arguing, but nothing that sounds like he needs to step in and mitigate.

Killian is wiggling her fingers in front of the baby, who is squealing and making grabby hands at her. “You know, Bluejeans, you _can_ hold her, she’s not like. Breakable.”

“Actually she is _super_ breakable, Killian,” Scales interjects. “Super-duper, totally, one-hundo percent breakable!”

Hathaway snorts. “She’s not made of glass.”

“She could be,” the musician argues. “I might have a rare condition called Glass Bones—“

Carey’s arm darts forward to punch her brother, and he yelps. The child delights in this, and so does Barry, but he covers his laugh better. “Guess you don’t,” she chirps.

“Seriously, what are you, four?” he grumbles. “Hathy, she hit me!”

“Use your words, Carey,” Barry interjects instinctively. “I mean! Uh…sorry.” Years of that on the Starblaster have trained him to be quick and deadpan with most of his peacemaking skills. He hadn’t meant to say that out loud. But Carey and Scales both guffaw at this, and Hathaway laughs too, covering her smile with her hands. Killian is holding the kid now, but she’s chuckling before nodding to the kitchen.

“Maggie, you good?”

Magnus looks properly cowed. “Taako yelled at me about making noodles and hung up in a huff. It’ll be a few minutes.”

Barry gets up. “Uh, if you don’t mind me going into your kitchen, Hathaway?”

She waves a hand. “Head on in. I’ve never met him personally, but Taako sure sounds…intense.”

“Only when he’s cooking.” This comes from the four in the house who know him, and it sets off another round of laughs.

He heads in the kitchen and meets Magnus at the table. He’s looking at the stone of far speech like a kicked puppy but perks up when Barry pulls out a chair.

“What did you do?” he asks.

“Nothing. Just put the pasta in with the sauce, accidently.” He sighs and rests his head in his hands. “And before you ask, yeah, I talked to Taako. And yeah, he told me to make pasta for lunch when it’s clearly a dinner food. Apparently no one likes PB and J anymore.”

He pats his friend’s bicep. “Sorry buddy. I, for one, love PB and J. Taako’s just jealous because he’s allergic to peanuts.”

Magnus smiles.

There’s something behind it though, a certain lovable “we gotta talk” kind of grin that Barry is familiar with but hasn’t often been on the receiving end of.

Barry asks, “What?”

The fighter takes a deep breath and says, “I think you should talk with Lucretia.”

Barry groans and leans back in his chair. “No thank you. Maybe in a few years.”

“Look, Taako isn’t going to do it either, and Davenport is dragging his feet a little bit, just. Please. No one says you have to forgive her.”

He shakes his head. “No one says I have to talk to her either.”

Magnus look heartbroken. “She’s basically your sister,” he says.

“She did keep you all from trusting me? Like, you remember that, right?” He almost says, _or did she make you forget_ , but that’s too cruel. He knows better, knows how badly it hurt her…and yet he just can’t…get there. Not yet.

“She’s family,” Magnus states. “Like it or not, we all are. You have to talk to her.”

“Families fight.”

“They also talk it out and _forgive_ , Barry.”

His head snaps up and he glares at Magnus. “You had ten years of blissful unawareness, Magnus. I didn’t. I’m not about to forgive her for ten years of isolation, forgetting, dying, and remembering. I’m…I don’t hate her, Magnus but…god I’m not fucking doing this with you, too." He'd already discussed this with Lup. "I’ll be civil, but I’m not…I don’t want to talk it out with her. I think I’m rightfully pissed.”

“If you hadn’t pitched yourself off the edge of the ship, you—“

“Would _you_ have done the same if you knew it would keep your memory intact? I couldn’t remember her _face_ , Magnus. I was _terrified.”_

He can see pain flicker behind his friend’s eyes, and he backtracks, just a little bit. Guilty. “Sorry,” he says, and he really is. “That’s not…fair of me to ask. Or say, I guess. You might uh…have gotten ten years of…a different life, but I guess I got a…uh…”

“A second chance,” Mangus finishes with a soft smile. “S’okay.”

Barry bows his head. “Sorry. I’m…sorry that was. Mean.”

“It’s totally cool,” he says softly. “Don’t do it again, at least on purpose, because we might actually get into a fight, and I like your flesh body. It’s soft and huggable.”

They sit there waiting for the stone of far speech to ring with Taako’s frequency in heavy silence.

Mags is the one to break it. “I was mad too. When I learned that she had done that to us? I was mad too. You saw me—I had the sword pointed at her and everything.”

“I know.”

“But then I thought about it. I mean, y’know, after everything, not—the end of the worlds was kind of at the forefront but like, y’know, after. Anyway, I just…I thought about Jules.” He looks at his hands, and Barry does too. He’s got a tan line from his wedding band, but it’s almost not noticeable at first. Never quite faded, but a ghost of what it had been. “I mean…I hate that I forgot. But I don’t think I’d have ever met Julia if I hadn’t? I wouldn’t be the man I am today without her. I don’t…I don’t ever _want_ to know who I would be without her.”

“Listen, Magnus, I—“

“The point I’m making is I know Lucretia fucked up. She fucked up _bad,”_ Magnus interrupts. “And like…she regrets that. I’m still working on forgiving her fully. But it’s almost there for me, because the life she gave me in the old one’s stead was…is better. I know that it’s not like that for you. Or Taako, or Lup really, or Merle I guess. Definitely not for Davenport. You’re all…dealing differently with how you ended up living those ten years. It was awful. But…I don’t know, I met the goddess of fate, and she seemed pretty nice so, I mean, maybe this was always where we were heading. Maybe we were supposed to forget and suffer and remember and go through this?”

“So because it’s fated—which I call bullshit on—we should just…forget about it?”

“Dude, did you not hear me? No. Remember that shit. Let is shape you. Just don’t let it ruin you. You don’t really have to forgive her?” he shrugs. “If that’s not your steez, then fine. But I think that if we talk it out, it’ll be easier to get over it. Like…like disinfecting a wound. S’not gonna heal right away, but you’re also not gonna like. Have to amputate your arm.”

“Sounds like a dig at Merle.”

“In the form of a metaphor, yeah, it was.”

Barry smiles a little and stares at Mangus for a long moment, watching the man as he stares into the wood grain of this table. He’s got those ten years that were taken from him back, but there are still lines on his face, around his mouth and starting at his eyes. Laughter lines, and scars, and little nicks and flaws in the skin that are signs that his friend has just…grown up.

He’s a little thankful for that, if not a bit shocked. “Well…damn. Good advice.”

“Damn straight. Gotta say? Didn’t work on Taako. Did not even faze him.”

Barry shrugs. “I don’t blame him.”

“I don’t either. Or any of you. Just…think about it, okay?”

Barry nods. He will.

Twenty minutes of silence later, Taako actually _shows up_ at the Fangbattle-Redcheek residence and says he’ll be making a “proper lunch,” himself, with Mangus’ help.

“Which means we’re making two-cheese fettuccini, and you chucklefucks are actually going to stand around and hand me stuff, because gods _forbid_ I have a day off.”

“There is a child literally in the room with us, a young and impressionable child,” Killian groans. Scales and Hathaway just snort. “Also, hey Taako, how’re you doing?”

Taako glaces at Magnus, and waves lazily toward him. “Doing good. And it’s nothing he hasn’t heard before. He’s a big boy.”

Magnus nudges his friend, and the three of them head toward the kitchen

And as they cook, Barry is struck really by how much the two have grown together, by how much they’ve all grown.

He’ll cling to that. Let it be the start of…cleaning out the wound.

* * *

 

 _It starts with a Magnus looking for a fight at a bar, and finding one as a guy starts to_ _go for Lucretia, who’s sitting in a booth, writing in her journals. The guy goes to take one, or something like that, Barry wasn’t paying attention really, and Merle had politely stepped in, and then Magnus had not so politely grabbed the guy by the shoulder and threatened him, which made the guy shove Magnus. And then Lup had even more not so politely hit him, after shoving a pair of shoes into her brother’s waiting arms._

_And then fists are swinging, glasses and bottles are flying, and the bartender has long since given up trying to stop the fight._

_Barry is trying very hard to pay it no mind; he’s paid for his drink and he’d really like to finish it and the next chapter of “With Conscience: A Conclusive Guide to Testing Necromantic Theories Without a Body.” It’s a fascinating read. So when the first full bottle of honey-brewed whiskey flies by his ear and knocks his glasses off—nearly braining **him** —he’s got enough sense to duck behind the bar and enjoy his last night home from this new vantage point._

_He winces as the sound of a—a fucking chair—breaking, and Lup shouting, “Okay! My turn!”_

_“Pass him to me next!” This is Magnus._

_Merle is ushering Lucretia behind the bar, and then standing on top of it to get in a few faces of people tossed to him. Barry has met her only a few times now, and has spoken to the chronicler even less. She’s still very reserved, but in the meetings they’ve had with Captain Davenport, he’s found that she’s…pretty cool. Shy, but hey, so is he._

_Lucretia’s head peaks over the top of the bar just a bit, and then higher, before ducking down again to scribble something in her journal. It really seems like a great show._

_“Lucretia, honey,” Merle says, catching her popping up just as a broken bottle flies by his head, and leaves a small cut behind, “the point of you being behind the bar is so you don’t, you know, get into the fight while you uh, chroniclize this?”_

_“Oh, I know,” she says quickly, jotting something down. “And, well. Thank you, Merle. I appreciate this. Just…one more thing.” She slides back down and uses her opposite hand to write in a different journal._

_“Who’s winning?” Barry asks, taking a sip of whiskey._

_“The IPRE. Magnus has some guy in a choker hold, Lup took a guy out with one of the shoes she or Taako won, Capt’nport looks nervous but is otherwise just reading something.” She’s writing with both hands now fully, and Barry is fascinated. “Oh. And Merle is on the bar, you’re back here, and so am I, which…” she peaks over the bar again to look, and Merle shouts for her to duck as a glass shatters just over their heads. A voice shouts, “Alright then! Fuck you!”_

_“What the hell was that?” Barry asks._

_Lucretia sighs, and for a moment looks disheartened. “A perfectly good glass of seventy year old tawny port that our captain was drinking.”_

_“Yikes, was that who yelled?”_

_She nods. “That’s really such a waste. I hope the bottle’s still in tact.”_

_Barry opens his mouth to reassure her and also try not to laugh, but Taako is flung into the bar, and leans back just a bit to reach out a hand._

_“Wine me!”_

_“Excuse me?” Lucretia asks, aghast. “No. No, no no no. Please don’t waste this shit, Taako, this is really expensive and well-aged stuff.”_

_Barry, on the other hand, gets on his knees to look in the cabinet behind him. “Fantasy Grey Goose work? Or I think there’s like, a big bottle of Fantasy Jack Daniels. That’s okay, right?”_

_Taako opens and closes his hand rapidly. “I’d prefer an eighteen-something brandy, but sure, yeah whatever!”_

_Barry hands it over, and isn’t all that shocked to see the glow of transmutation magic surround it. It stretches and warps and thins, and suddenly he’s holding a purple and blue pool cue. “Alright! Time to get yours, fuck you!” The wizard launches himself back into the fray._

_Lucretia sighs. “Brandy. For crying out loud.” There is the sound of liquid splashing and glass breaking, and Lucretia holds up a finger for him to wait before shouting, “If you’re going to go on much longer, can someone please save the port!”_

_There is a chorus of laughter, Barry’s included._

_She goes back to writing double handed after that, and Magnus, their head of security, pulls them out a minute later with a, “We should probably go!”_

_They do all rush out, but not before Barry grabs for a bottle that is still somehow intact and on a table near the window, under the open sign. He awkwardly hands the tawny off to Lucretia, who laughs in delight._

_It’s the start of a lovely friendship._

* * *

It’s a few months into this new kind of life when she gets her body back. The process of releasing the body from the tube has always been a messy one, but she comes out of it like she comes out of everything. Her hair is wet, but long and blond and loose. Her skin is the same dark with the odd freckle and scar here and there, and she’s just as willowy and powerful as she grabs the old IPRE robe and drapes it over herself.

She looks so fucking wonderful, and standing in her presence again fills his entire being with something he hadn’t even known he’d missed. That warm honey feeling of being in love and seeing your heart standing in front of you, smiling and doing nothing else but existing in the same world as you.

She leans close to him, and tells him she’s going to smooch him.

And then she does.

It’s wonderful. His hands trace her face, the shape of her cheekbones, the skin under her eyes. Hers do the same, tracing the corner of his mouth when they pull back to breathe, tracing the line of his jaw, feeling the stubble he’d meant to shave this morning.

He kisses her nose, her eyes, her shoulders, the crown of her head.

She kisses his cheeks, his forehead, his neck.

It’s been a long time since he’s cried this openly in front of Lup. It’s been a long time since she’s cried in front of him. There is nothing really there in that thought; during the time they fought the Hunger, tears became useless after the first few years. And once he and Lup had come together after that concert at Legato, they’d never found a reason to drop into despair, so long as one would catch the other. So long as their family—because by then, they were a family—was there to catch them.

But this isn’t despair, or loneliness, or fear. This is happiness, this a love that has lasted so long, has been so true, that it is woven into the fiber of their very being. Into their souls.

And so, they kiss and they cry and they hold each other close and laugh breathlessly, getting lost in each other for the first time in…awhile.

* * *

 

Taako absolutely does not let go of her once they walk into his smaller apartment in Neverwinter. He’s mixing something in a glass bowl and asking Angus a question about a school application when they walk in.

It had been Lup’s idea not to tell any of them when she was going to get her body back. She wanted to walk in, looking like her old self, and surprise everyone.

Taako’s poor bowl had been a casualty of the idea, but it was really kind of worth it to see Taako’s face light up.

Barry didn’t try to listen to whatever they were saying to each other. It was elvish, and then some common, and some other languages they’d learned in their lifetime, so Barry gestures to the kitchen and grins at Angus.

“Wanna help me find a broom kid?”

Angus looks warmly at the two hugging elves before nodding. “Yes, sir.”

* * *

 

“I know he’s the most powerful man in the word,” Barry is saying into his stone of far speech, “I understand not taking the title of governor, but you’re not an _Earle_ , M—“ he stops himself, and on the other end Merle’s laugher is hysterical. “I can’t believe this.”

“It’s such a great joke!”

“You’re chosen to be the leader of a beach society, you teach children how to adventure, and you named yourself Earle fucking Merle, Merle,” Barry groans.

“Mavis didn’t like it much either,” he chuckles. “But Mookie thought it was a delight. Not sure if the joke hit him hard, but he laughed anyway.”

“I don’t know how we survived one hundred literal years of this. Spare your actual children, I beg you,” Barry complains, voice shaking with repressed laughter.

“Y’all never appreciated my advanced sense of humor,” Merle jokes fondly. “But when I told him, Magnus still laughed. Some things never change.”

He smiles warmly at his stone, and chuckles. “Yeah,” he says. “Guess not.”

* * *

 

The forgiveness of Lucretia happens over time. It is not within the year of the Story and Song, but it does happen. One day Barry will talk to her at a reunion on the moon at the Bureau of Benevolence, and they’ll be civil. He’ll joke, and she’ll laugh so hard brandy come out her nose, sending Lup into hysterics. Barry will apologize, and then will do it again, but with more seriousness. It will feel heavier to them both, and they’ll hug, and though it will leave a nasty scar, time and talk does heal this wound.

But that is later.

* * *

 

_They’ve opened the port from the day at the bar. It’s been a long year, but they’ve managed to get the light and keep everyone on the crew alive._

_“To the Institute of Planetary Research and Exploration,” Davenport says, raising a glass._

_Taako blows a raspberry. “Baby steps, capt’n,” he says. “We **are** the IPRE, and I haven’t done shit. How about to a year well done?”_

_“Or to finding the light,” Lup suggests._

_“We can always just drink to Pan and get it over with,” says Merle, who’s already sipping at his drink and wincing at the flavor._

_“What about to…future stories?” Lucretia asks. Taako snorts and she laughs. “Yeah, no, that’s dumb.”_

_“Real dumb, but great try Lu, that’ll be plan B,” Lup tells her._

_Barry doesn’t suggest anything. He wouldn’t really know what to toast to. It’s a serious mission, but in times like this, he’s just thankful for them being alive._

_Magnus, though, he gets it. “What about to the future?”_

_Davenport raises an eyebrow. “That’s…not bad.”_

_“Well, I thought about ‘to Fisher’ or something, but he’s not here to feel appreciated right now. So.”_

_They laugh._

_“Alright,” Davenport says. “Alright. To the future,” he says, raising his glass. “And whatever it may hold.”_

_And so, at the end of the ninety eighth cycle, they toast to their seemingly endless future._

* * *

 

“I really can’t wrap my head around it,” Barry is saying, adjusting his tie as he and Kravitz head toward the cathedral’s kitchen area. “How did she even _get_ my paper to begin with?”

Kravitz shrugs. “She’s a goddess?”

“Who _abhors_ necromancy! She shouldn’t get to proof read the thing, do you know how bias she is?”

The Reaper laughs. “I mean, you _should_ hate it, it’s kind of in your job description.” They weave past a group of people heading toward their seats. Kravitz says, “Anyway, the goal of this discussion was to ask you to please not take information from dangerous necromancers and tweak their math so that it works. I know that you are, by trade, a pain in my ass, but it makes me look _really_ bad.”

Barry bursts out laughing. “I am, by trade, a necromancy expert in theory mostly and a grim reaper. The pain in your ass thing is just a pleasant bonus.”

“Bully for me,” the other jokes.

They step past Scales and Lucien, who are carrying instruments with them as they make their way into the cathedral.

“This whole place is pretty beautiful, huh?” Barry asks. “It’s a little weird to think this whole area wasn’t here a year ago, and that it was attacking the world.”

Kravitz snorts. “It’s pretty poetic though. On top the ashes of our enemy something beautiful is born, and born again.”

Barry rolls his eyes. “You are such a _bard_.” That juicy tidbit of information was a secret that lasted five seconds. It was too good not to tell, and so Lup—who had gotten it out of him on a rather long mission—told Barry, who told Taako, who knew already, but mentioned it to Merle, who is the biggest gossip on Faerun.

Their whole expanded family knew now.

Though it’s really not a bad thing, Kravitz still blushes. There is laughter coming from down the hall, and they almost walk past the kitchen area, stopping in to let them know about the wedding that's about to start.

Lup hops off her stool to hug her brother, and leaves with Barry, saluting Kravitz as they go.

They make it to an area that overlooks the Stillwater Sea and the garden growing out of the judges body.

Lup pauses and leans against one of the pillars, crossing her arms. “This is nice,” she says, and she sounds calm.

Barry watches the afternoon sunlight on the unmoving water, the breeze through the tall wildflowers. It is serene, and gorgeous, and it’s…a small slice of the heaven. The plane taking a deep breath after nearly choking out its final one, and smiling.

“It’s pretty damn great,” Barry says.

They’re silent for another minute. On the summer wind, voices and shouts and music carry through the grass. The sky is a bright, cloudless blue, and he can think of no other place he’d want to be than standing in this church next to Lup, watching as life slowly happens around them.

“Hey,” Lup says, not looking away. “Remember the Day you gave me?”

Barry nods and smiles. “Kept me around for ten years. Hard to forget.”

Lup laughs. “I guess that tracks. Remember how I won that argument we had? About who got to ask who to marry who?” The fabric of the dress she’s wearing rustles as the turns fully to him. “You said I won.”

Barry is only grinning at her. “Yeah. You did win. I still uh…I’d still really like to do that someday.” He leans forward and takes Lup’s hand in his, kisses her knuckles, scarred from cooking and fighting and evocation.

Lup brings him in to her, using the hand he’s kissing to close the distance. Their hands are twined together between them, like their making a promise. He’s not so sure they aren’t _._ She’s beaming right back at him, and her free hand is carding through his hair.

“I was thinking,” she tells him, “that sometime after this? We should do it.”

“Really?”

“Absolutely positive. I think I’ve left you hanging long enough. I promised you the goods, so…here they are.”

He looks her in the eyes, and she looks back. He sees the finality in her decision, the happiness as he only nods. Barry closes his eyes as Lup rests their foreheads together.

“So,” he asks, “when do you wanna get hitched?”

Lup smiles and pecks the tip of his nose. “There are a ton of options, babe. We could elope, but I think Magnus would upset.”

“To say nothing of Taako,” he jokes. “We could do it right after this wedding, leave before the ceremony, say we couldn’t possibly wait.”

Lup laughs. “We could ask the Raven Queen to officiate us right now. Have it over with.”

Barry pretends to think it over. “You really think I should get married in this suit?”

Lup cackles, throws her head back and laughs and it fills him with joy. The hands twined between them do not part. “You’re right!” she exclaims. “And I forgot my veil.”

“A real tragedy,” Barry says. “In all seriousness though…”

“It’s a yes?”

“It’s a hell yes, Lup,” he agrees, and brings her in for a kiss. It’s a promise they’re making, sealing the deal with yet another kiss.

“I love you,” he whispers to her.

“I love you,” she whispers back.

It’s still the same really, this feeling. Since the day he’d met her, since the day he nearly sliced his finger open thinking about her. Since Taako had told him all he had was time to love her, since holding her hand at the end of their concert at the Conservatory. Since their Day. Since the night she’d comforted him as he admitted how scared he was. The feeling that he would follow her anywhere is overwhelming, but it only the foam on top of an ocean compared to how deeply he loves her now.

They kiss again before hurrying to get to their seats. And as she leads him through the crowds, hand never leaving his, Barry feels the sudden urge to laugh and to cry. After one hundred and twelve years and some odd days, Barry feels at home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> find me on tumblr at famousinthatanonymousway!
> 
> thank you for reading!


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